Weir Mitchell (1872) and Sharpey-Schafer (1931) reported that section of a nerve supplying cutaneous fibres to the fingers results in a retardation of nail growth. Head and Sherren (1905), however, believed that the slowing of growth observed in these cases wvas due entirely to the immobilization of the limb either as a result of splinting or paralysis and that division of sensory fibres withou...

A subtraction technique has been employed to study refractoriness in the median nerve and thenar muscles in man. The absolutely refractory periods of the distal motor nerve branches and of the muscle fibres were found to be similar, the majority being within the 2.5--3.0 ms range; the values were distributed in a unimodal manner. The relatively refractory periods of the motor nerve terminals we...

In the study of the drying kinetics of nerve fibres, at least five "phases" of water evaporation can be distinguished. A consideration of the accompanying changes in low-angle x-ray diffraction patterns permits a tentative identification of the "phases" and a quantitative interpretation of the data in terms of the water distribution in nerve fibres. These results suggest that the myelin sheath ...

It is often assumed that large diameter nerve fibres are affected selectively in patients with compressive peripheral nerve lesions. However, in five of 13 patients with the carpal tunnel syndrome, plethysmography revealed that the normal digital vasoconstrictor response to inspiration was abolished in the index finger but preserved in the little finger of the affected hand. This indicates that...

This study seeks to extend the observations of previous studies of projection of primary afferent fibres from the forelimb nerves and muscles to the external cuneate nucleus (ECN) of mammals using a neurotoxic lectin, Ricinus communis agglutinin (RCA) to achieve chemical ganglionectomy of the dorsal root ganglia. Following intraneural injection of RCA into the three main forelimb nerves, namely...