Case of supra-sternal luxation of the clavicle / by Robert W. Smith.

  • Robert William Smith
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Case of supra-sternal luxation of the clavicle / by Robert W. Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    12/12 (page 8)
    It will be seen from the preceding resume., that the archives of surgical science, previous to the publication of the present case, contained only seven examples' of the injury under consideration. The case I have described constitutes the eighth, and is ])eculiarly valuable as being the first (a.s far as I am aware) in which the anatomical characters of the injury were accurately established by post-mortem examination, for the account given by Duverney ig totally destitute of value, as a dissection of the injury. It is a luxation of necessarily rare occurrence, for it not only requires for its production that the force applied should be very great, but that it should also act upon the shoulder in an unusual direction, viz., downwards, inwards, and probably backwarfls. The result of this threefold impulsion is that the clavicle, converted into a lever of the first order (the fulcrum of which is constituted by the first rib) is forced at its sternal extremity upwards and inwards. [Note.—Upon the principle of “ better late than never,” I wish to correct an error which appeared in my paper on “ Fractures of the Sternal End of the Clavicle,” pub- lished in the number of the Dublin Journal of Medical Science for August, 1870. At| line seven from the bottom, page 16, the words “ sterno-clavicular ” should be “ acromio- clavicular.”—R. W. S.]