Surg Neurol
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The authors have developed and patented a neurosurgical retractor system incorporating an infrared emitter and detector that allows detection of cerebral pulsations. Gentle contact with the surface of cat brains shows cerebral pulsations that correlate with arterial pulse as well as mechanical ventilation. ⋯ The pressure on the surface of the brain decreased 50% in 5 minutes even though the position of the retractor was maintained constant. The authors postulate that monitoring cerebral pulsation may prove useful in clinical neurosurgery with respect to avoiding excessive retraction, which causes brain damage.
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Biography Historical Article
Victor Horsley, John Marshall, nerve stretching, and the nervi nervorum.
In his early professional life, Victor Horsley was registrar and assistant to Mr. John Marshall, anatomist, surgeon, and president of the Royal College of Surgeons. In helping with the research for the Bradshaw Lecture on Nerve Stretching given by Marshall in 1883, Horsley demonstrated changes in nerve fibers due to mechanical stretching of the sciatic nerve, and he also demonstrated small nerve fibers in the sheaths of peripheral nerves--the so-called nervi nervorum. Marshall attributed the benefits of nerve stretching in sciatica to the interference with these nervi nervorum hitherto considered to exist only in the sheath of the optic nerve.