Report of the Verral Charitable Society.

  • Verral Charitable Society (London, England)
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Verral Charitable Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    41/46 (page 37)
    tions and explanations. In the first place, I must reprobate all violent attempts by means of pullies, heavy weights, and forcible compression to straighten parts which, having been diseased, have healed by bony union, and which must therefore continue permanently curved. What a powerful and long-continued pressure may do, by ex¬ citing or compelling absorption of a projecting spinous process, I cannot tell; but it is, I conceive, certain that it can have no effect on the distorted and united bodies of the bones. The notion is surely ridiculous, yet it has not unfrequently been entertained. In the next place, I almost equally condemn all those spinal supports, as they are called, which making the hips their fulcrum, profess by acting on the shoulders, to straighten the crooked spine. The attempt is futile; even were the object attainable the means would fail ; for the shoulders, unattached as they are to the general bony structure, may be pushed up to the ears without affecting the form of the vertebral column. But as they weaken the muscles, and probably contract the chest, they are not powerless as to evil, though incapable of effecting good. ABSCESS, &C. On the subject of caries and abscess, I have nothing to add to what has been said in the Report, excepting to mention a favourable circumstance which has many times occurred in my practice, and which I believe to be mainly attributable to the position employed. When the cure has for some time appeared to be auspiciously progressing, we have occasionally been disappointed by the appearance of an abscess presenting itself usually in the groin or front of the thigh. It has been opened, and instead of continu¬ ing to discharge, as is usual, for weeks and months, and sometimes for years, it has spontaneously and speedily closed. It has appeared to me that, formed during the existence of disease, and containing perhaps some offending or decayed matters of which it was necessary to get rid, it slowly but steadily made its way forwards, favoured by the position of the patient, leaving behind it healthy and healing parts, and finally closing as soon as it was relieved of its contents. How different would the result have been, if, the patient being placed on his back, the matter had been allowed to lie where it was formed, burrowing amongst the muscles in the neighbourhood of the diseased parts, and thus increasing the evil from whence it originally sprung. If my explanation of an undoubted fact be a correct one, it surely speaks volumes in favour of the position I am advocating. This circumstance has recently occurred in the case of Robert Hudd, a poor boy recommended to the care of the Society by the Lady Eliz. Whitbread. That of Henry Parrot, and in part also that of Win. Fox, may be given as instances of a similarly favourable termination. LATERAL CURVATURE. Of lateral or twisted curvature of the spine, it is impossible to say all 1 would wish to say here. The subject would require a volume, and it must be remem¬ bered that I am writing an essay, not on the treatment of distorted spine, but on the use of the prone position. To the general adoption of that position, not to the ex¬ clusion of air and exercise, but to the exclusion of standing and sitting, I am, I doubt not, indebted for much of the success which has attended my treatment of these dis¬ tressing deformities. It materially promoted the cure of very many of my patients, and has enabled me to improve the health, to relieve the sufferings, and to amend the form of many more who, from their age or from the extent of their distortions, could not expect to be perfectly cured. Miss C. P., a young lady, aged sixteen, had been for ten months employing a variety of exercises, under the direction of a surgeon, who largely employs that method of treat¬ ment. She had been especially using the hand swing and heavy dumb bells, but was, notwithstanding, gradually becoming worse. The dumb bells I absolutely forbade at once; the swing I allowed her to continue under some modifications. She had, when she first came under my care, some enlargement of the right shoulder, together with a slight sigmoid flexure of the spine. As the case was not a very bad one, I allowed her to take much exercise in the air; but within doors the use of the couch was enjoined as a constant substitute for the sofa or the chair. In all other respects the usual treat¬ ment was adopted, and in four months I had the satisfaction of pronouncing her perfectly well. Miss M., aged nineteen, had been, when I saw her, in November, 1836, under the direction of a surgeon of great eminence, who had ordered the use of the reclining-board,