Observations in surgery / by Benjamin Travers, jun.

  • Travers, Benjamin, 1783-1858.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations in surgery / by Benjamin Travers, jun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    been often noticed, when old people become the subjects of mortal injury. The limb was adjusted ^ in a semiflexed position ; but the bone continued to ride as above noticed. Beyond the certainty that no action had commenced at the seat of injury, things were pronounced to be favourable until the seventeenth day from the accident. The old man ate his food with appetite, and rested well at night. Now the respiration was suddenly affected, being slower and more laboured than is natural. The pulse, also, became slow and feeble. The patient retained consciousness, and died on the morning of the eighteenth day, twelve hours after the first accession of the symptoms here described. On examination, the fracture proved to be very oblique, and the broken ends lay far apart in a muscular bag or pouch distended by a dark fluid blood. The surface of the lower fragment was quite bare, being stripped of its periosteum, and no inflammatory change whatever had taken place. The vastus intern us muscle was lacerated par- tially. Much fluid was found in the ventricles of the brain, but no further change in any part, if we except such occasional interstitial thickening or chronic adhesion as are incidental to this period of life. In certain cases, the solution of continuity begins in the transverse direction, which is afterwards inclined. This, also, is seen in the larger shaft