Knight Bigum

In the age of 3-2 Sigmund Freud developed a new problem. Pricking and other unpleasant sensations had over-taken your skin on the outer side of his right thigh. Walking built his symptoms worse. The affected skin was remarkably painful and sensitive to touch and even the typical rubbing of his underclothes irritated the area.

Seven decades later in 1895, when Freud wrote up his self-observations to get a German medical journal, the abnormal sensations were still present, but had migrated. At first, the area of disturbance had been more obvious near the top of the thigh, but gradually the abnormal sensations moved downward to some area a fingers breadth above the side of his leg.

When Freud squeezed a fold of skin in this region, it hurt a lot more than it did in his left leg. Though he may feel a pinprick as such, it also burned. Nevertheless, individual locations inside the zone of abnormal skin were insensitive to typically unpleasant techniques. H-e also pointed out that temperature sense was reduced. Comfortable objects placed against the affected skin felt colder than in unaffected areas. And even though the original pricking sounds increased with time, his outer leg had become generally less sensitive and painful to usual stimulations.

Freuds doctor, Josef Breuer, discovered that the affected skin was in the territory of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve, a nerve that has no physical associations and concerns it-self with experience only. Dr. Breuer concluded that Freuds symptoms were due to damage to this nerve. Dr. Breuer also suspected that the nerve might be specially vulnerable to injury in the groin close to the front of the hip where it passes between lengths of a ligament. As a result, he thought that wearing tight clothing may aggravate the situation.

Our knowledge of this disorder has changed little in the 110 years since Freud wrote his report for Berlins Neurologisches Centralblatt, or in the 20 years since Francis Schiller, M.D., translated it into English for the American newspaper Neurology.

Freud and Breuer were not the first to ever recognize this problem, setting the record straight. Max Bernhardt of Germany first wrote about this in 1878 and in 1895 Vladimir Roth of Moscow called the situation meralgia paresthetica, a period still in-use. This name may be the sum of its three parts. Meros is Greek for leg, algos is Greek for pain and paresthetica means unprovoked feelings. This