Series of twelve bone and joint cases : illustrating recent improvement in the mechanical surgery of the lower limb / by Rushton Parker.

  • Parker, Rushton, 1847-1932.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Series of twelve bone and joint cases : illustrating recent improvement in the mechanical surgery of the lower limb / by Rushton Parker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Medical Times and Gazette, July 14, 1883.] Case 3.—Acute Sprain of the Knee joint—Aspiration of Effused Blood—Treatment partly in Bed and partly on Foot—Cure in about a Month. Harris W., aged twenty-seven, a Polish Jew glazier, applied on August 9, 1879, having four days previously fallen in the street and severely hurt his right knee, which had shortly after swollen, and had been extremely painful in the interval. The joint was distended, very tender, and apparently con- stantly painful. Besides the unequivocal signs of disable- ment he exhibited the timidity and extreme sensitiveness that seem to be usual in his race. He was put to bed, and the limb was placed at once perfectly straight in a Thomas’s knee-splint. Aspiration was then performed at the outer upper corner, and about two ounces of bloody fluid, that soon coagulated, were drawn off, with admitted comfort to the patient. Three days later the splint was removed, the joint was enveloped in many layers of plaster (pitch and resin spread upon brown paper) from the middle of the thigh to the middle of the leg—not tightly, but so as to maintain the straight position,—and the patient sent on foot to his home in the immediate neighbourhood, whence he returned twice a week for inspection. The plasters were removed each time, the joint examined, and fresh plasters put on, making a stiff case as clean and neat as a grocer’s parcel, as firm as a starched bandage, at a cost to the hospital of about two- pence, and to the surgeon of about two minutes on each occasion. A little re-accumulation of fluid wras noticed during the convalescence, but this gradually disappeared under the fixed position of the joint, that still did not debar the patient from the painless support and moderate use of the limb in progression.
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