The electrical diagnosis of peripheral nerve injury, and some applications of electronics to physiology and clinical medicine

Abstract

In the summer of 1941 the Scottish E. M. S. Hospitals organization established a special Unit for the reception and treatment of patients suffering from peripheral nerve injury at Gogarburn Hospital on the outskirts of Edinburgh. In connection with this specialized type of injury, relatively rare in peacetime but assuming considerable importance in War, invitations were issued to various Persons sroecializing in ancillary branches of Medicine and Surgery to attend the clinical meetings of the Peripheral Nerve Unit, to consider applications of their work to this particular problem, and to have access to the patient for the assessment of their methods.Peripheral nerve injury diagnosis and treatment involves a considerable field of application for methods which have been primarily developed as physiological techniques, particularly in the use of modern electrical apparatus, and the Director of the Unit, Professor J. R. Learmonth, invited me to attend the clinical meetings, and to make a study on the patients of modern methods of electrical diagnosis, and this opportunity, gladly accepted, has furnished me with a wealth of problems and of material ever since.This thesis accordingly presents such of these problems as have at present been worked out to the extent of being of clinical or laboratory use.