The Rôle of the Sympathetic Nervous System in the Production of Pain in the Head

The role of the sympathetic nervous system in the production of pain has been under investigation since Hilton, 1 in 1863, stated that cutaneous pain was found occurring on the surface of the body in association with derangements of internal and often remotely situated viscera. In recent years the investigations have been stimulated by the observations that at times section of the posterior spinal roots and of the fifth cranial nerve fails to produce complete analgesia or to relieve pain, and that section of parts of the sympathetic nervous system does relieve certain pain. The failure to relieve pain by section of the posterior spinal roots and the failure to produce complete analgesia in the deafferented areas led to the proposal by Leonard Kidd that pain could be conducted antidromically over the anterior roots (Lehmann, 2 Foerster, 3 Shawe 4 and Wartenberg 5 ). In a former communication we described a