Orthopaedic surgery : a text-book of the pathology and treatment of deformities / by J. Jackson Clarke.
- Clarke, James Jackson, 1860-1940.
- Date:
- 1899
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Orthopaedic surgery : a text-book of the pathology and treatment of deformities / by J. Jackson Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.
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![on that presume to prescribe for different deformities. In the past, cases of deformity were handed by the physician to the instrument-maker, and from his love of mechanism and ignorance of physiology and pathology much unneces- sary and injurious practice arose, to the discredit ot orthopiedic surgery. Many medical men, influenced by this tradition and from want of training in orthopaedic surgery, still send patients directly to the instrument-maker, and leave the diagnosis and treatment of the case to him, and thus encourage a great deal of unqualified practice, which is against the true interest of the community, since it entails often defective or erroneous treatment, unnecessary and unnecessarily prolonged use of instruments. There is evidence that these matters are becoming more generally understood, as may be shown by a quotation from a recent review :— Even nowadays too many surgeons think that they have done all that is required of them when they send an ortho] >a.'dic case to an instrument-maker. They themselves should provide the measurements and details of the instrument which is to be made, and unless they can do so they should not attempt to treat these cases.* For the successful working of an orthopedic hospital department it is necessary that the surgeon should control every detail of the instrument-making. An enthusiasm for the promiscuous use of instruments is almost as dangerous as an enthusiasm for surgical opera- tions, and just as to those who are truly interested in medical education it seems a mistake to place the description of operations in the opening instead of the concluding chapters of a text-book on general surgery, so in a text- book on orthopedic surgery the section dealing with instru- ments should be placed after milder and more natural and before less conservative measures. Nothing has done more harm to the progress of orthopedic surgery in this and other countries than the advocacy of a certain mode of treatment as appKcable to all cases of one or other deformity, to the exclusion of other means. Success in orthopedic cases depends upon the most scrupulous attention to detail as well as a full under- * Review of Moore's Orthopn^dic Surgery, lu»ect,I)oc. 21, 1898.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21444262_0030.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
