Dear Sir, - For a long time students and physicians of medical science have been puzzled to a phenomenon common to many people who have a leg or an arm amputated. A great many of these surgical cases occasionally "feel" pain in the missing limb for years afterwards. The accepted explanation was that this sensation was caused by the nerve ends cut off when the limb was amputated and the remaining nerve fibres were pressed or stretched, causing unpleasant stimuli to travel to the brain.
Now Dr. R. Molinery, a prominent French physician, after a great deal of research on the subject has advanced a new theory. He believes that dreams keep alive in the sub-conscious mind the picture of a complete body.
The same sub-conscious mind is chiefly responsible for pain. Accordingly it puts together its dream memories of a complete body and any sensations occasionally received over the cut nerve fibres to make what seems like a pain or other sensation in a part of the body now purely imaginary.
In one case investigated by Dr. Molinery a man who had lost his arm not only continued to feel his vanished thumb, but felt as though it were being thrust through the palm of the hand like a spike. In another, a woman who had her leg amputated many years previously continued to feel pain in the infected foot which had originally made the operation necessary.
Cases such as these, according to Dr. Molinery, should be treated mentally, rather than physically, as has been the practice up to the time when recently he explained his theory to the society of Medicine in Paris.
Yours truly,
Student.