Notes on the medical history and statistics of the British Legion of Spain; comprising the results of gun-shot wounds, in relation to important questions in surgery / [Sir Rutherford Alcock].

  • Alcock, Rutherford, Sir, 1809-1897.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on the medical history and statistics of the British Legion of Spain; comprising the results of gun-shot wounds, in relation to important questions in surgery / [Sir Rutherford Alcock]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    served, and expressed respecting their future means of existence, in the uncertainty or disbelief that they would be provided for by pension, bore unequally upon the two classes, exercising its chief influence upon the primary am- putations, A man who has been lying from three to six weeks on a bed of suffering with a fractured limb, losing at last all hope of its being saved, naturally and instinctively begins to concentrate his hopes and wishes into the mere preserva- tion of life, resigned to any future worldly miseries, and will- ing to encounter them for the sake of that life, which now becomes valuable to him in proportion to the jeopardy in which he conceives it placed. Not so with a man whoa few hours before was in no such danger, but, on the contrary, was in full activity and uninjured ; he cannot bear the idea of being crip- pled for life—of losing the means of earning his subsistence, and enjoying existence without bodily injury or impediment. A. feeling of despondency, near akin to despair, takes posses- sion of his mind; the desire to preserve life seems lost in the train of gloomy ideas which immediately take possession of his mind, and he dwells upon the long vista of misery which stretehes before him, ending at best in a work- house; regret and anger fill up the measure, at having ex- posed himself to such a misfortune as the loss of a limb, ina service which, he fears or believes, will neither requite nor provide for him. I rarely ever found any difficulty in per- suading these men to submit toa secondary amputation. After they had heard me, their answer uniformly ran thus :—‘ Oh, I know, sir, my leg cannot be saved— I have suffered more than enough already—I shall only die with it on—1 wish it had been off at first—so, whenever you like, sir—the sooner the better !” Whereas, with a patient who required a primary amputation, the answers were of a very different tenor, and my opinion and advice in some cases were obstinately rejected; but,even when they consented, the first answers almost invariably ran thus: H