A bed grapple / by Frederic Griffith.

  • Griffith, Frederic.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A bed grapple / by Frederic Griffith. 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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    [Reprinted from The Medical Council of January, 1904.] A BED GRAPPLE. C^) By FREDERIC GRIFFITH, M.D., New York. Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine ; Surgeon, Bellevue Dispensary. A device which I found to be almost uni- I versally employed in hospitals through- I out Europe, for the comfort of patients, consists of what may be called a hand i grapple suspended above each bed. To see ■ the ease and manifest increased comfort to the bedridden this contrivance brings, excited my wonderment that my country- iinen, who surely have seen it in time past, had not brought it into use long ago in our own hospitals. The invention consists of a wooden handle (A) made from ten to twelve inches long and one and one-eighth or one quarter inches in diameter. It may be turned from an oak stick or improvised from a broom handle. A six foot length of light manilla rope, fitted with a short- |i ening block (B) such as is used for a wall- I tent guy, is to be spliced to the middle of the handle ; the free end of the rope is to be turned with an eye splice. Support * Presented at the New York Academy of Medicine, Sur- i gical section, November 4, 1903. is obtained from above by means of a strong, wrought-iron, hooked bracket set in the wall behind the. bed. The best design consists of the welded iron made so that the arm (C) has a swing radius from the eyes (D), set in the wall of at least three feet, or when the bed is at proper distance from the wall to have the handle hang above and between the patient’s elbows when in a natural supine position. By means of the shortening block the handle is set within easy hand grasp at about one foot above the reclin- ing body. When temporary, a strong screw hook may be driven into a joist in the ceiling above the patient’s bed instead of using the swinging bracket ; this will necessitate of course having a longer length of rope. To increase the comfort of our patients during the long hours of the day and night, when oftentimes the busy nurse cannot spare the time to ar- range the pillow or change the position of the tired body, is to aid toward conva- lescence as much as to order a pus drained dressing to be changed, and is to play the part of the good surgeon. 49 East 64th Street.