ABSTRACT
Rational surgery on peripheral nerves started with the description of the epineurial nerve suture by Hueter in 1873. An enormous development started and if one looks into the early literature one realizes that more or less all the ideas we discuss today had already been put forward in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tubulization with different materials including veins was recommended. Langley and Hashimoto (1917) suggested performing perineurial (fascicular) nerve repair. Albert (1876) used autologous nerve grafts and Foerster (1915) harvested cutaneous nerves as donors for nerve grafting. Seddon (1947) described the cable graft. Strange (1947) anticipated the vascularized nerve graft by transplanting nerves as pedicled grafts. Different types of end-to-side coaptations were suggested.
