Medicine: Phantom Exorcises

Surgeons have known for 400 years that patients who undergo amputations continue to have "sensations," ranging from a pleasant tingling to excruciating pain, in the limb that is no longer there. They have dubbed it "pain in the phantom limb." Now surgeons are coming around to the idea that the best way to exorcise many cases of phantom pain is by phantom exercise.

Dr. Allen Sidney Russek of New York University's rehabilitation center pioneered the exercise method as part of an effort to treat both the physical and emotional aspects of the pain. It...

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