Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[242] away from one another. Any emotion was painful to him. Even in conversation, any thing that called for depth of thought or feeling caused him suffering, so that we had to be very careful with him. He had another trouble, resulting from the sprain which was at the level of the lowest dorsal vertebra. The irritation produced was intense, and the result very painful. When he tried to move forward, he was compelled to push one foot slowly and gently forward but a few inches, and then drag the other foot to a level with the first, holding his back at the same time to diminish the pain that he had there. It had been thought that he was paralyzed in the lower limbs, and that he had disease of the brain; and the disease of the brain was construed as being the cause of this paralysis of the lower limbs.

Fortunately, the discovery made of what we call the vasamotor nervous system led me at once to the conclusion that he had no disease of the brain, and had no paralysis: he had only an irritation of those vasa-motor nerves, resulting from the upper sprain in the spine. That irritation was the cause of the whole mischief as regards the function of the brain. The other sprain caused the pain which gave the appearance of paralysis. When I asked him if he was conscious of any weakness in his lower limbs, he said, “Certainly not: I have never understood that my physicians considered me paralyzed. I only cannot walk on account of the pain.”

What was to be done was to apply counter-irritants to those two sprains. That was done. I told him that the best plan of treatment would consist in the application of moxas, and that they produced the most painful kind of irritation of the skin that we knew. I urged him then to allow me to give him chloroform, to diminish the pain, if not take it away altogether.