The Rehabilitation of Patients Totally Paralyzed below the Waist: With Special Reference to Making Them Ambulatory and Capable of Earning Their Own Living

Abstract

EVERY patient who has sustained an injury to the spinal cord, conus or cauda equina and is intelligent and Cooperative has the right to expect infallible twenty-four-hour control of urination by the time he leaves his physician's care. Only those whose bladders have been denervated because of bilateral destruction of the parasympathetic plexuses or the lower four sacral segments or roots need any extraneous aid. Their numbers are negligible among civilians. Control of urination is an essential preliminary to self-support. No one will either walk abroad or be able to hold a job if he smells or if his clothes . . .