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cal Features.#--The symptoms resulting from division and non-union of a nerve-trunk necessarily vary with the functions of the affected nerve. The following description refers to a mixed sensori-motor trunk, such as the median or radial (musculo-spiral) nerve. _Sensory Phenomena._--Superficial touch is tested by means of a wisp of cotton wool stroked gently across the skin; the capacity of discriminating two points as separate, by a pair of blunt-pointed compasses; the sensation of pressure, by means of a pencil or other blunt object; of pain, by pricking or scratching with a needle; and of sensibility to heat and cold, by test-tubes containing water at different temperatures. While these tests are being carried out, the patient's eyes are screened off. After division of a nerve containing sensory fibres, there is an area of absolute cutaneous insensibility to touch (anaesthesia), to pain (analgesia), and to all degrees of temperature--_loss of protopathic sensibility_; surrounded by an area in which there is loss of sensation to light touch, inability to recognise minor differences of temperature (72-104 F.), and to appreciate as separate impressions the contact of the two points of a compass--_loss of epicritic sensibility_ (Head and Sherren) (Figs. 91, 92). _Motor Phenomena._--There is immediate and complete loss of voluntary power in the muscles supplied by the divided nerve. The muscles rapidly waste, and within from three to five days, they cease to react to the faradic current. When tested with the galvanic current, it is found that a stronger current must be used to call forth contraction than in a healthy muscle, and the contraction appears first at the closing of the circuit when the anode is used as the testing electrode. The loss of excitability to the interrupted current, and the specific alteration in the type of contraction with the constant current, is known as the _reaction of degeneration_. After a few weeks all electric excitability is lost. The paralysed muscles undergo fatty degeneration, which attains its maximum three or four months after the division of the nerve. Further changes may take place, and result in the transformation of the muscle into fibrous tissue, which by undergoing shortening may cause deformity known as _paralytic contracture_. _Vaso-motor Phenomena._--In the majority of cases there is an initial rise in the temperature of the part (2 to 3 F.), with redness and increased
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