Observations and experiments on a new mode of treating fractures of the leg and fore-arm : especially compound fractures / by William Beaumont.

Date:: 1831

Credit: Observations and experiments on a new mode of treating fractures of the leg and fore-arm : especially compound fractures / by William Beaumont. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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$may be re-adjusted; but the motion of the retraction or re-adjustment must necessarily undo all that nature may have done towards the raparation of the injury : and besides which loss of time, the patient has to suffer, in many instances, some considerable pain in the re-set- ting of the fractured bone. It also happens in the like cases, when the muscles of the limb continue long irritable, that one is at last obliged to leave the one portion of the bone, or bones, retracted on the other: under which cir- cumstances the patient recovers, of course, with a shortened limb. And in such a case, where by tightening the splints, it is attempted to prevent retraction, the pressure made thereby, is unequally distributed on the limb, it may be excessively painful to the patient, and occa- sionally sufficient to cause ulceration or slough- ing of some portion of the skin. Whereas, by incrusting in plaster of Paris a fractured leg, retraction of the distal upon the proximal por- tion of the bones (no matter how oblique the fracture, or disposed to contract may be the muscles) is afterwards prevented, by the im- possibility of drawing the foot into the space occupied immediately above it by the ankle, or the bent knee into the space immediately below the knee. And the same with regard to a frac- tured fore-arm; the hand cannot be drawn into$