Discourses on the nature and cure of wounds / by John Bell.

  • John Bell
Date:
1800
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discourses on the nature and cure of wounds / by John Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    507/518 page 231
    tremities, the proportion of the wound to the whole fyftem is fmall, the fever flight; the cafe is in all re- fpects more manageable ; a man wounded in the arm can be carried with little comparative luflfering horn a field of battle, and he is not confined tor months to a loathfome hofpital; the moment that his fever is gone, he is able to rife, he recovers his health, and he preferves it during the whole cure. We ftruggle long and patiently to preferve the hand, for it is by his hands that the poor man earns his bread; but, in a great wound of the leg, we ought not, by a Jong confinement, to rifk his life to fociety, or to thofe. who are depending upon him ; and, w'hen he is forced to lofe his leg, he, ftill having his hands to work with, continues a ufelul citizen, though, no doubt, he will be ufelefs as a foldier; and this very diftin&ion con- ftitutes, I believe, the chief difference betwixt the practice of the Englifli and of the Pruflian furgeon, wliofe decifion on this point has been, if I am not greatly miftaken, fettled by fome higher authority than that of a jury of army-furgeons. Gthly, Amputation fliould, in thofe cafes where the limb is plainly and irrecoverably difordered, be per- formed upon the fpot. When the operation has been delayed, either by the inconveniencies of your fituation, the tardinefs of confultants, or by the real accidents and difficulties of the cafe; in fhort, wherever the pain or fwelling, fe- ver, or convulfion, have come on, there you muff re- frain from prefent operation, and mufl try to fave the limb. But again, after the patient, having efcaped i
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