The second siege of Paris : the ambulances and hospitals of Paris under the Commune / by John Murray.

  • Murray, John.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The second siege of Paris : the ambulances and hospitals of Paris under the Commune / by John Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and covered with braises and lacerations, numbering sixteen in all. The husband and sister were also seriously hurt. The limb, which was utterly smashed, was removed below the knee-joint, and she had since been progressing favourably. She was, however, five weeks after the operation, inordinately feverish, and there was great pain with some effusion, apparently synovial, into the knee-joint. The wound was healing satisfactorily, however ; and there had been no rigors or other symptoms pointing to pyaemia. Compound Fracture of the Tibia and Fibula, caused by a Shell.—This occurred in an apple-woman, who was struck, two or three days be¬ fore, close to the Cirque Imperatrice, by an unexploded shell, which came tumbling along the Champs Elysees with its force almost ex¬ pended. The skin was lacerated immediately over the tibia at the seat of fracture, but to a slight extent. A small piece of dead bone was now becoming detached: the woman was doing well. Shell-wound of the Tarsus. — An interesting case of wound of the foot was brought into the ambulance on May 12th, from the Batterie Avancee at the Porte Maillot. The patient, P. Brost, aged 39, was a captain in the Artillerie de la Garde Nationale, and had in his button¬ hole the decoration of Victoria, obtained for services with the French army in the Crimea. He at that time had received a shell-wound of the tarsus of the right foot, and was now the subject of a similar wound of the left foot, almost precisely in the same situation. The in¬ jury was caused by an ailette, one of the leaden discs fixed on the shell to run in the groove of the gun. When the shell explodes, these discs very frequently become detached from the fragments of the shell, and produce very severe wounds, from their flatness and the raggedness of their edges, consequent on the friction in the groove. In the present instance, the ailette, which was sharp and ragged at its edges, had passed about halfway through the tarsal bones; the ankle-joint was laid open; and the end of the tibia was felt in the wound. The pain was for some time considerable, but in a couple of days this had almost completely subsided. The wound continued to look healthy; and there was a fair chance that, with the sound constitution of the man, the wound would speedily heal up with a stiff joint. Lacerated Wound of the Eye. — E. M., a volunteer in the National Guard, and only seventeen years of age, presented a wound of the con¬ junctiva, which was slightly lacerated. The injury had been caused by an obus knocking a sandbag off a barricade at Neuilly, and driving pieces of stone into his eye. Several small bits of stone were removed from the