The Atlantic Monthly | Page 7

lost parts, so that he will tell you, "Now I feel my
thumb,--now I feel my little finger." I should also add, that nearly every
person who has lost an arm above the elbow feels as though the lost
member were bent at the elbow, and at times is vividly impressed with
the notion that his fingers are strongly flexed.
Another set of cases present a peculiarity which I am at a loss to
account for. Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if
the foot was present, but as though the leg were shortened. If the thigh
has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the
arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself.

As I have said, I was next sent to the United States Army Hospital for
Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. Before leaving Nashville,
I had begun to suffer the most acute pain in my left hand, especially the
little finger; and so perfect was the idea which was thus kept up of the
real presence of these missing parts, that I found it hard at times to
believe them absent. Often, at night, I would try with one lost hand to
grope for the other. As, however, I had no pain in the right arm, the
sense of the existence of that limb gradually disappeared, as did that of
my legs also.
Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of;
and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed to the above-named
hospital. It was a pleasant, suburban, old-fashioned country-seat, its
gardens surrounded by a circle of wooden, one-story wards, shaded by
fine trees. There were some three hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis,
St. Vitus's dance, and wounds of nerves. On one side of me lay a poor
fellow, a Dane, who had the same burning neuralgia with which I once
suffered, and which I now learned was only too common. This man had
become hysterical from pain. He carried a sponge in his pocket, and a
bottle of water in one hand, with which he constantly wetted the
burning hand. Every sound increased his torture, and he even poured
water into his boots to keep himself from feeling too sensibly the rough
friction of his soles when walking. Like him, I was greatly eased by
having small doses of morphia injected under the skin of my shoulder,
with a hollow needle, fitted to a syringe.
As I improved under the morphia treatment, I began to be disturbed by
the horrible variety of suffering about me. One man walked sideways;
there was one who could not smell; another was dumb from an
explosion. In fact, every one had his own grotesquely painful
peculiarity. Near me was a strange case of palsy of the muscles called
rhomboids, whose office it is to hold down the shoulder-blades flat on
the back during the motions of the arms, which, in themselves, were
strong enough. When, however, he lifted these members, the
shoulder-blades stood out from the back like wings, and got him the
soubriquet of the Angel. In my ward were also the cases of fits, which
very much annoyed me, as upon any great change in the weather it was

common to have a dozen convulsions in view at once. Dr. Neek, one of
our physicians, told me that on one occasion a hundred and fifty fits
took place within thirty-six hours. On my complaining of these sights,
whence I alone could not fly, I was placed in the paralytic and wound
ward, which I found much more pleasant.
A month of skilful treatment eased me entirely of my aches, and I then
began to experience certain curious feelings, upon which, having
nothing to do and nothing to do anything with, I reflected a good deal.
It was a good while before I could correctly explain to my own
satisfaction the phenomena which at this time I was called upon to
observe. By the various operations already described, I had lost about
four fifths of my weight. As a consequence of this, I ate much less than
usual, and could scarcely have consumed the ration of a soldier. I slept
also but little; for, as sleep is the repose of the brain, made necessary by
the waste of its tissues during thought and voluntary movement, and as
this latter did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was
necessary to repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centres as was induced
by thinking and the automatic movements of the viscera.
I observed at this time also, that my heart, in place of beating as it once
did seventy-eight in the minute, pulsated