Stump-Hospital.

I spent here three and a half months, before my transfer to the United
States Army Hospital for nervous diseases. Every morning I was carried
out in an arm-chair, and placed in the library, where some one was
always ready to write or read for me, or to fill my pipe. The doctors
lent me medical books; the ladies brought me luxuries, and fed me; and,
save that I was helpless to a degree which was humiliating, I was as
comfortable as kindness could make me.

I amused myself, at this time, by noting in my mind all that I could
learn from other limbless folk, and from myself, as to the peculiar
feelings which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the
great mass of men who had undergone amputations, for many months felt
the usual consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or
pained, or was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful
sensations referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued
unaltered for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then, by
degrees, the sense of having that limb faded away entirely. I think we
may to some extent explain this. The knowledge we possess of any part is
made up of the numberless impressions from without which affect its
sensitive surfaces, and which are transmitted through its nerves to the
spinal nerve-cells, and through them, again, to the brain. We are thus
kept endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the
impressions which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred
by us to the part from which they came. Now, when the part is cut off,
the nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being
impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump
impressions which are as usual referred by the brain to the lost parts,
to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like
a bell-wire. You may pull it at any part of its course, and thus ring
the bell as well as if you pulled at the end of the wire; but, in any
case, the intelligent servant will refer the pull to the front door, and
obey it accordingly. The impressions made on the cut ends of the nerve,
or on its sides, are due often to the changes in the stump during
healing, and consequently cease as it heals, so that finally, in a very
healthy stump, no such impressions arise; the brain ceases to correspond
with the lost leg, and, as _les absents ont toujours tort_, it is no
lon