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CHICAGO PHANTOM limb pain was first described by Ambroise Par\l=e'\1 in 1551, and many theories have since been advanced to explain it. The present study was made with the thought of developing a form of therapy for this extremely painful entity. A review of the literature revealed an unusual variation in types of therapy. Among such procedures are removal or resection of a painful neuroma at the stump, further reamputation, sympathectomy, ganglionectomy, chordotomy, posterior rhizotomy, leukotomy and, in some cases, focal ablation of the cortex in the posterior central convolution.In 1871 Weir Mitchell 2 published his work and gave the term by which this condition is known\p=m-\phantom limb pain. He stated that a person with this condition is haunted, as it were, by a constant or an inconstant fractional phantom of so much of himself as has been lopped away. He was the first to faradize the track of the nerves in or above the stump. As a result of this stimulation, the patient felt as though he had the limb or hand or foot that had been amputated. Weir Mitchell stated the belief that this phenomenon was due to irritation of sensory trunks, which occasioned impressions of muscular motion in the sensorium. He found that 95 per cent of patients experience phantom limb after amputa¬ tion, albeit no pain.Henderson and Smyth's 3 study of .300 cases revealed that phantom limb was a natural, and almost universal, sequel to amputation. They reported three kinds of sensory phenomena : ( 1 ) mild tingling, which forms the basic part of the phantom in nearly every case and probably

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