On bone-setting (so called), and its relation to the treatment of joints crippled by injury, rheumatism, inflammation, &c. &c / by Wharton P. Hood.

Date:: 1871

Credit: On bone-setting (so called), and its relation to the treatment of joints crippled by injury, rheumatism, inflammation, &c. &c / by Wharton P. Hood. 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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$cured a patient in whom this precaution has been neglected, with the wholly unfounded expectation that the stiffness will cure itself. Of late years, especially in fractures of the fore-arm, I have made it a rule to move the joints frequently from the very beginning of the treatment, taking the thumb, fingers, wrist, and elbow seriatim^ and of course care- fully steadying the fractured bones during the time. I have already referred to the importance of the thumb-pressure as a means of fixing the attachment of an adhesion, and preventing the possibility of partial displacement of a bone, especially in the carpus or tarsus, by the force employed by the operator. I am disposed to think that this thumb-pressure exerts yet another beneficial influence, and that, by fixing the attachment of an adhesion, it secures that the adventitious material shall be broken through at some point of its own length, and not torn from either of its insertions. It is manifest that the former result would be far less likely to produce irritation or mischief than the latter. In the case of all the larger joints it is the$