A manual of minor surgery and bandaging for the use of house surgeons, dressers and junior practitioners.

  • Christopher Heath
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of minor surgery and bandaging for the use of house surgeons, dressers and junior practitioners. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    177/256 (page 153)
    SETTING VIIACTUKES. 15;) and nerves of the limb. 4t]i. Compound fracture into a large joint. Scftiufj fractures.—All fractures, both shnple and compound, must be set properly, c, the broken por- tions ninst be brought in their proper relation with the rest of the limb, before a cure can be effected. As a general rule, it is better not to attempt to set a frac- ture until everything is ready and at hand for its final treatment, or putting up ; but when a piece of bone is seen to have taken up such a position that any slight movement of the patient may force it through the skin, it will be better to make traction at once, restore the piece, if possible, to its proper place, and keep up extension while the necessary apparatus is being prepared. In thus effecting extension, one assistant should grasp the limb firmly above the injury and another below it, and both should then make steady traction in opposite directions until reduction is effected, of which the house-surgeon Avill judge partly by the restoration of the symmetry of the limb, partly by carrying the finger along the most prominent portion of the bone to ascertain its regularity, as well as by comparison with the other limb and careful measiu'ements. In making comparative measurements of limbs, great care must be exercised to take precisely the same fixed points on the two sides; and an ordinary measuring-tape is the best instrument for the purpose, since the exact measurement of eacli side can be at once read off' and recorded. The following are the principal points made use of in measuring the limbs : In the lower extremity— From the anterior superior spinous process of the ilium to the loicer border of the patella. (The lower border of the patella should always be selected, and the bone be pushed up as far as the ligament will