Notes on the medical history and statistics of the British Legion of Spain; comprising the results of gun-shot wounds, in relation to important questions in surgery / [Sir Rutherford Alcock].
- Rutherford Alcock
- Date:
- 1838
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Notes on the medical history and statistics of the British Legion of Spain; comprising the results of gun-shot wounds, in relation to important questions in surgery / [Sir Rutherford Alcock]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Case I.—Series of 10th March. Musket-shot traversed knee-joint—Amputation forty-eight hours after injury. Died twenty-first day after operation. Diseased liver. Bartholomeo Lepe, aged 18 ; aswarithy Andalusian, short, thin ; excitable habit.—He was shown to me on the evening of the 12th, in the church of Santa Maria, where a portion of the Spanish wounded, resulting from the action of the 10th, had been collected, and upon examination I found a musket-shot had traversed the knee-joint, partially fracturing the bones, and apparently striking superficially the opposite knee on the inside. Some little febrile action had set in, as also inflammation of the limb, but not to any great extent. At the request of the Spanish medical officers J] amputated above the knee, by the circular incision ; and as I observed that they were in the habit of applying ligatures of half a dozen threads, and of leaving both ends hanging out of the stump, without speaking on the subject, which might have excited an unpleasant feeling without producing any good result, I made the strongest possible contrast in those points where they were most at fault—such as the inefficient appli- cation of the tourniquet—two persons carving at the limb at thesame time—the cable ligatures, protruding bone, &c.* Thus, one of my own assistants compressed the artery at the groin, and * As I have alluded to the bad surgery that fell under my observation among the Spanish medical officers attached to the army of the north, it is but justice to say, that I am aware there are exceptions among them. Dr. Belmunt, a Spanish physician and a graduate of Edinburgh, to whose services we were much indebted, informed me, that a colleague of his, educated at Barcelona, had dur- ing the war twice amputated at the hip-joint, and once with success—an opera- tion which can never be performed with success, by an indifferent surgeon, nor is it indeed likely to be attempted.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33279147_0090.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
