Phantom limbs as reported by S. Weir Mitchell

Personalizing illness and modernity: S. Weir Mitchell, literary women, and neurasthenia, 1870-1914.

This article examines how the affliction of neurasthenia, commonly diagnosed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, acted as a catalyst for intellectual and lifestyle changes during a time of modernization. At the center of the study are three individuals: neurologist S. Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) and two of his patients, critic and historian Amelia Gere Mason (1831-1923) and writ...

Phantom limbs.

search director of the Pain Clinic at Montreal General Hospital. His work on the neurophysi-ology of pain spans almost four decades. After obtaining his Ph.D. in psychology at McGill in 1954 and taking up fellowships in the U.S. and abroad, he joined the faculty of the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959. There he and Patrick D. Wall began discussions that led to the publication in 1...

Psychophysiological contributions to phantom limbs.

Recent studies of amputees reveal a remarkable diversity in the qualities of experiences that define the phantom limb, whether painless or painful. This paper selectively reviews evidence of peripheral, central and psychological processes that trigger or modulate a variety of phantom limb experiences. The data show that pain experienced prior to amputation may persist in the form of a somatosen...

Phantom limbs and neural plasticity.

The study of phantom limbs has received tremendous impetus from recent studies linking changes in cortical topography with perceptual experience. Systematic psychophysical testing and functional imaging studies on patients with phantom limbs provide 2 unique opportunities. First, they allow us to demonstrate neural plasticity in the adult human brain. Second, by tracking perceptual changes (suc...

Drs. S. Weir Mitchell and Edward T. Reichert on the Poison of Heloderma Suspectum (Cope), the Gila Monster