ords of grayer color, flatter
outline, and less glistening hue, which were afterwards found to be
nerve-trunks. Cutting either paralyzed the limb below the cut,--and what
more proof could you ask of their having the same function?

Such is the persistence of ancient memories, that any physician could
tell you of scores of cases in which he has heard the naive remark, in
reference most frequently to a deep gash across the wrist, that the
"nerves" were cut, and the hand was paralyzed, when what had happened
was simply that the tendons had been cut across. When, after centuries
of blundering in every possible direction until the right one was
finally stumbled upon (which is the mechanism of progress), it was
realized that some of these "nerves," the grayer and flatter ones,
carried messages instead of pulling ropes, they were still far from
being properly understood.

It is an amusing illustration of the blissful ignorance and charming
naivete which marked their study and discussion at this time, that
nerves were for centuries regarded as hollow tubes, carrying a supply of
"animal spirits" from the central reservoir of the brain to the
different limbs. So seriously was this believed, that, in amputations,
the cut nerve-trunks were carefully sought out and tied, for fear the
vital spirits would leak out and the patient thus literally bleed to
death. One can imagine how this must have added to the comfort of the
luckless patient.

The term "nerves" still persists, in the old sense, in both botany and
entomology, which speak of the "nerves" of a butterfly's wing, or the
"nervation" of a leaf, meaning simply the branching, fibrous framework
of each.

It comes in the nature of a surprise to most of us to learn that
"nerves" are real things. I shall never forget the shock of my own first
convincing demonstration of this fact. It was in one of the first
surgical clinics that I attended as a medical student. A woman patient
was brought in, with a history of suffering the tortures of the damned
for a year past, from an uncontrollable sciatica.

It was a recognized procedure in those days (and is resorted to still),
when all medical, electrical, and other remedial measures had failed to
relieve a furious neuralgia, for the surgeon to cut down upon the
nerve-trunk, free it from its surrounding attachments, and, slipping his
tenaculum or finger under it, stretch the nerve with a considerable
degree of force. Whether it acts by m