Nerves and Pain

One bright April day in 1903, Dr. Henry Head of Cambridge University, England went to a surgeon friend and asked him to make a six-and-a-half-inch gash in his upper left arm. Dr. Head, a robust, 42-year-old neurologist, was no masochist. He wanted to learn the connection between nerves and pain. The surgeon severed two nerves in Dr. Head's arm, flexed it at the elbow, put it up in a splint, and left his hand free for testing.

Next morning another colleague began to tickle Dr. Head's hand with cotton wool, fine hairs, hot and cold needles. He marked out the areas insensitive to pain and touch, took full notes on Dr. Head's sensations. It took several years for all feeling to return, but the arm healed perfectly.

Neurologists still remember Sir Henry's slashed arm. For pain is an important index in the diagnosis of brain and nerve injuries. A neurologist searching for a brain tumor in a patient with a weak, dragging left leg, for example, carefully pricks him with a pin to see where and how much he retains his sensation of pain. If the skin in a limited area is dulled, the neurologist knows that only a surface nerve is injured. If the patient is analgesic over a wide area, several nerves or even part of his brain may be damaged. By carefully eliminating any possibility of spinal cord or nerve injury, the neurologist may locate the tumor or injury in the upper right-hand surface of the brain.

After a lifetime spent in studying nerve diseases, paralysis agitans (shaking palsy) attacked Sir Henry in 1926. But for 14 years his trembling fingers clung to life. Last week, at the age of 79, Sir Henry Head died in Reading, England.

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