Next came a more conventional and ostensibly more humane stimulus of applying serious pressure on a knuckle of each limb using the shaft of a reflex hammer, the neurologist’s favorite weapon. Women neurologists, I have noticed, tend to press harder than men, as if to insure that no one is getting out alive. In this instance there was not a whit of movement. All but a fully paralyzed, comatose patient would exhibit a straightening of the arms and pushing backward as the shoulders rotate internally. But here: nothing, no cerebral response.
