TRANSFER OF PAIN.—Strictly speaking, pain is not in any organ, but in the mind, since only that can feel. When any nerve brings news to the brain of an injury, the mind refers the pain to the end of the nerve. A familiar illustration is seen in the "funny bone" behind the elbow. Here the nerve (ulnar) gives sensation to the third and fourth fingers, in which, if this bone be struck, the pain will seem to be. Long after a limb has been amputated, pain will be felt in it, as if it still formed a part of the body—any injury in the stump being referred to the point to which the nerve formerly led. [Footnote: Only about five per cent. of those who suffer amputation lose the feeling of the part taken away. There is something tragical, almost ghastly, in the idea of a spirit limb haunting a man through his life, and betraying him in unguarded moments into some effort, the failure of which suddenly reminds him of his loss. A gallant fellow, who had left an arm at Shiloh, once, when riding, attempted to use his lost hand to grasp the reins while with the other he struck his horse. A terrible fall was the result of his mistake. When the current of a battery is applied to the nerves of an arm stump, the irritation is carried to the brain, and referred to all the regions of the lost limb. On one occasion a man's shoulder was thus electrized three inches above the point where the limb was cut off. For two years he had ceased to be conscious of his limb. As the electric current passed through, the man, who had been profoundly ignorant of its possible effects, started up, crying, "Oh, the hand! the hand!" and tried to seize it with the living grasp of the sound fingers. No resurrection of the dead could have been more startling.—DR. MITCHELL on "Phantom Limbs" in Lippincott's Magazine.]
The nerves are divided into three general classes—the spinal, the cranial, and the sympathetic.
FIG. 54.
[Illustration: P, posterior root of a spinal nerve; G, ganglion; A, anterior root; S, spinal nerve. The white portions of the figure represent the white fibers; and the dark, the gray.]
THE SPINAL NERVES, of which there are thirty-one pairs, issue from the spinal cord through apertures provided for them in the backbone. Each nerve arises by two roots; the anterior is the motory, and the posterior the sensory one. The posterior alone connects directly with the gray matter of the cord, and has a small ganglion of gray matter of its own at a little distance from its origin. These roots soon unite, i. e., are bound up in one sheath, though they preserve their special functions. When the posterior root of a nerve is cut, the animal loses the power of feeling, and when the anterior root is cut, that of motion.
THE CRANIAL NERVES, twelve pairs in number, spring from the lower part of the brain and the medulla oblongata.
1. The olfactory, or first pair of nerves, ramify through the nostrils, and are the nerves of smell.
2. The optic, or second pair of nerves, pass to the eyeballs, and are the nerves of vision.
3, 4, 6. The motores oculi (eye movers) are three pairs of nerves used to move the eyes.
5. The trifacial, or fifth pair of nerves, divide each into three branches—hence the name—the first to the upper part of the face, eyes, and nose; the second to the upper jaw and teeth; the third to the lower jaw and the mouth, where it forms the nerve of taste. These nerves are implicated when we have the toothache or neuralgia.