Antedating of "phantom limb" (1871)

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

I see that the OED (draft revision; December, 2005) has the following for a
very early usage of "phantom limb":

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1879 G. H. LEWES Probl. Life & Mind 3rd Ser. II. 336 The 'phantom limb', of
which Weir Mitchell speaks, is only one detail in the general picture
mentally formed of the body.

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S. Weir Mitchell's "Phantom Limbs," an article detailing sensory disorders
he had observed in those who lost limbs in the Civil War, appeared in the
December 1871 issue (p. 563) of *Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
and Science*.  As *The American Literary Gazette and Publishers' Circular*
("The Magazines for December," 1871, p. 30) noted, "'Phantom Limbs,' by Dr.
S. Weir Mitchell, is a very curious and interesting sketch, descriptive of
the nervous phenomena experienced by those whose limbs have been amputated."

(In 1872 Mitchell followed up with _Injuries of Nerves and Their
Consequences_ [Philadelphia:  Lippincott], which contains a more scholarly
treatment of this sensory syndrome.  In his discussion of the "neural
maladies of stumps," he notes that "[n]early every man who loses a limb
carries about with him a constant or inconstant phantom of the missing
memory, a sensory ghost of that much of himself, and sometimes a most
inconvenient presence, faintly felt at times, but ready to be called up to
his perception by a blow, a touch, or a change of wind."  There, he does
mention a "phantom hand," but "phantom limb" itself is absent.)

-- Bonnie

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