ty
to slight injuries, to be referred to later under the external popliteal
of the lower extremity. Again, in complex injuries of the brachial
plexus, or nerve trunks, the musculo-spiral branch rarely escaped being
a member, if not individually singled out.

Of the _thoracic nerves_ I have little to say. They must have been often
injured in the thoracic wounds, yet, as far as my experience went,
intercostal neuralgia was uncommon, or at any rate not a special
feature. One observation of interest, however, does exist; in the cases
in which the ribs were fractured by bullets travelling across them
within the thorax, pain was distinctly a prominent feature. This was no
doubt referable to the facts that in such instances the intercostal
nerves were especially liable to direct injury, and that this was often
multiple. On one occasion a crop of herpetic vesicles developed along
the course of a dorsal nerve in an injury implicating a single
intercostal space posteriorly.

_Lumbar plexus._--Although not quite so well arranged to escape bullet
wounds as the thoracic nerves, the lumbar, by reason of their deep
position and the comparatively wide area they cover, together with the
rarity of wounds taking a sufficiently longitudinal direction to cross
the course of more than one or two branches, were also comparatively
rarely damaged. I never saw an uncomplicated case of anterior crural
paralysis, and rarely cruralgia. I think this is to be explained in two
ways: first, that the trunk course of the nerve is short; secondly, that
it lies in the inguinal fossa. The second fact is of importance, since
wounds in this region were in my experience responsible for a
considerable percentage of the deaths on the field or shortly
afterwards. Such deaths probably occurred from internal haemorrhage from
the iliac arteries, and it was in such cases that the anterior crural
nerve stood in greatest danger of injury. I also never saw a case of
localised obturator paralysis. On the other hand, anaesthesia or
hyperaesthesia in the area of distribution of the lumbar nerves in the
groin, the external cutaneous and the long saphenous in the thigh, were
not uncommon. Hyperaesthesia developed in more than one case in which
injury to the psoas had led to haemorrhage into the muscle sheath.

_Sacral plexus._--The sacral plexus is far more liable to extensive
direct injury than either of the two preceding. Its cords are larger,
gathered up into a much sm