Neurectasy, or nerve-stretching for the relief or cure of pain. Being the Bradshaw lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 6th December 1883 / With 12 illustrations by Victor A.H.Horsley.

  • Marshall, John.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Neurectasy, or nerve-stretching for the relief or cure of pain. Being the Bradshaw lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 6th December 1883 / With 12 illustrations by Victor A.H.Horsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    Gillette, a French experimentalist, said, yes ! asserting that if the sciatic nerve was stretched, the spinal cord was moved in the spinal canal. Later observers have arrived at various conclusions. Thus Gussenbauer and Braun, working together, state that they have seen, in one case, a movement through the whole length of the cord up to the occipital foramen ; in a second case the movement was perceptible but not measurable; and in a third case they saw no movement at all. In the case in which the movement was measured, the amount, when recorded in millimetres, looks large, but it was only one-fiftieth of an inch, although the greatest amount of movement, that in the lumbar region, amounted to one-tenth of an inch, which, of course, is a palpable movement. Dana, an American observer, confirms the fact of there being some movement. Symington doubts it. Langenbuch, one of the greatest authorities on nerve-stretching, who has stretched more nerves than any man, found exactly what was met with in one of Gussenbauer and Braun's cases, namely, that although the movement was propagated to the spinal ganglia and to the sheaths which cover the roots of the spinal nerves as they pass out of the intervertebral foramina, it was not communicated to the intraspinal roots of the nerves, and necessarily not communi- cated to the cord. Mr. Horsley has made four experiments upon the great sciatic nerve in the dead body, and he found no movement of the spinal cord ; and, yesterday, having the opportunity of again testing the point in this College, I repeated this experiment together with him, and we found no appreciable resulting movement. We did find what may be an explanation of a movement in certain cases, namely, that, when you apply traction to the large nerves, the spinal column has its curves slightly altered, so that it becomes straighter in certain parts, and this, of course, produces some movement in the cord. When that alteration was prevented, we saw no proper movement. We recognised a slight movement in the dura-mater, and if you remember the attachments of the ligamentum denticulatum on either side between the dura- mater and the cord, you will understand that if the dnramater be moved you may gently disturb the cord. I believe