PHYSIOLOGICAL PARADOXES. 



which are really free from pain ; and it is not 

 much more wonderful than this to suffer pain 

 in a part of the body which is not actually 

 present* 



The fact is that pain is a feeling of the 

 mind, and what happens in the limb is only 

 part of the train of events which produce the 

 feeling in the mind. The mind is in connection 

 with the bundles of nerves which, running down 

 the middle of the backbone, form the spinal cord. 

 Groups of these bundles branch off from time to 

 time to go to various limbs and other parts, 

 much as a wire, or group of wires, branches off 

 from the main collection by the roadside, to 

 go to some town or village. Now, one of 

 these wires can be cut at a point far from its 

 destination, and through an instrument con- 

 nected with its new termination messages can 

 be sent to the head office in London which will 

 seem as if they had been despatched from the 

 old termination. 



So with the severing of nerve-trunks in an 

 amputation. Each fibre of the nerve ran to 

 some definite part of the extremities of the 

 body. When the nerve has been severed 

 each one of its constituent fibres has been 

 severed. In the process of healing or after- 

 wards, when the contraction of the scar or 

 some other cause of irritation stimulates some 

 of the fibres of the nerve, it produces effects 

 somewhat similar to those which would have 



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