On excision of the knee-joint / by Richard G.H. Butcher.

  • Butcher, Richard G. H., 1819-1891
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On excision of the knee-joint / by Richard G.H. Butcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    an unfavourable one, the patient’s general health being much impaired. The parents consenting, a day was fixed for tlie operation, which was performed 23rd of August, 1762. The ligaments were found in a very sloughy, suppurative state, with the cartilages greatly injured, and the heads of the bones much diseased, particularly the head of the tibia. The patella, with the head of the femur and a portion of the tibia, were removed; a good digestion came on ; the limb was kept in a straight po¬ sition, and on the 21st of November, 1762, he was got so well as to require no further attention. The person is now living, and sometimes goes to Liverpool, where, if you will give me leave, I will desire him to call upon you.” If the details of this case be correct, we have evidence of life being saved by ope¬ ration, but are left in total ignorance of a point nearly as vital —the usefulness of the limb afterwards in progression. In the year 1784 Mr. Park’s observations on cutting out the articulating end of the bones of the elbow and knee-joints were translated and published in France by the celebrated Professor Lassus, whose authority, one would have thought, might have procured for them a favourable reception. They were received with astonishment; and so' far were they from gaining credit, that even so late as 1789, they had acquired so small a number of partisans in the Academy of Surgery that some cases of a similar kind, which were presented to the So¬ ciety by the senior Moreau, were rejected, though they were of such a nature, and stated in a way that might have de¬ served a more favourable reception. In September, 1792, M. Moreau excised the whole of a carious knee-joint from the son of a M. Clause, apothecary at Chalons-sur-Marne, in the pre¬ sence of Baron Percy, Surgeon-General to the army of Keller- man, of M. Chamerlat, his colleague, and of several other eminent surgeons, both civil and military. The operation is described as being attended with success. In three months and a half afterwards the wound was healed, and the limb had acquired a considerable degree of firmness ; but the Prussians, in retiring from the French territory, left behind them an epidemic dysentery, which, as is well knowm, carried off the greater part of those who were attacked by it. It got into the hospital at Bar, where the patient was attacked, and he sank three months and a half after the operation. “ This unfortunate accident,” adds Moreau, “ deprived me of the pleasure of en¬ joying the fruits of ray care; but I remained convinced of the utility of the operation, and persuaded of the propriety of per¬ forming it in similar cases; I looked on my patient as cured, B 2
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