On the injuries and diseases of bones : being selections from the collected edition of the clinical lectures of Baron Dupuytren, Surgeon-in-chief to the Hôtel-Dieu at Paris / translated and edited by F. Le Gros Clark.
- Guillaume Dupuytren
- Date:
- 1847
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the injuries and diseases of bones : being selections from the collected edition of the clinical lectures of Baron Dupuytren, Surgeon-in-chief to the Hôtel-Dieu at Paris / translated and edited by F. Le Gros Clark. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![requisite, tlie day after its application, to raise the apparatus and examine the limb; as in some instances great swelling and even gangrene have been known to supervene in four and twenty hours. Afterwards, if there is no pain, a visit every five or six days will suffice. As to the period of treat- ment, in general it will be requisite to keep on the apparatus twenty-eight or thirty days in infants, forty days in adults, and a much longer time in old people : it should not be removed until the union appears to be complete. The best mode of ascertaining this fact is to grasp the fi-actured bone above and beloAv the seat of injury, and move it cautiously in different directions; if there is any yielding in the callus, the apparatus should be reapplied immediately, but if the union appears firm, it may be left relaxed by the side of the limb for a few days. At this crisis, however, it will be necessary to forbid the patient to walk, as the weight of the body and action of the muscles may cause the callus to give way; he should, on the contrary, keep in bed and at perfect rest for ten days or a fortnight, and then he may sit up, resting his foot on a pillow, -with the limb rolled, for about three weeks longer; at the expiration of which time he may commence the use of crutches, walking on smooth ground, and being very cautious that he does not slip.^ ' [The preceding remarks on the treatment of fractures of the lower extremity have been somewhat curtailed, for reasons which will be ob\-ious to those who arc familiar with the treatment of fractures in our hospitals, where the same ends are, for the most part, attained by simpler and more efficacious means than the rather cumbrous apparatus of the surgeon of the IIotel-Dieu.—Tr.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b23982573_0040.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
