The Domain of Orthopaedic Surgery
1931; BMJ; Volume: 1; Issue: 3659 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1136/bmj.1.3659.295
ISSN0959-8138
Autores Tópico(s)Musculoskeletal Disorders and Rehabilitation
ResumoIt is not my intention to trace this special branch cf medicine from earliest times-although such an exercise must have a chastening effect.Our very remote fore- fathers had philosophical minds, and often practical visioJn.When, with all the air of a discoverer, we descant upon the value of the sun and open-air hospitals it is a little humiliating to find that the followers of Aesculapius built a temple of healing to the honour of their master, and that the design of the open-air ward was almost identical with our most recent buildings, with free access to sun and air.I wrote an article some years ago on the conservative treatment of club-foot.It Imight have been copied from Hippocrates, who, with a wealth of detail, had anticipated -all I had to say.WVhen we realize the magnitude of this supreme ancient we must feel humble.He enriched surgery in all its branches'; 'but we shall best remember him as a pioneer of extension in the treatment of fractures, as a teacher of passive hyperaemia, as an authority on congenital dislocation of the hip, and on the correction of club-foot-and all this 400 years before Christ.Some years ago I was engaged as a witness in a medicolegal case.One of the issues referred to the method of reduction which should be employed in a case of disloca- tion of the head of the humerus with fracture of the surgical neck.Many distinguished surgeons in 1906 did not know of such an injury.They were much astonished to hear that fifty years before the Christian era Pasicrates (quoted by Malgaigne), in describing the injury, stated that he preferred -to reduce the dislocation and then to allow union of the humerus.Aristion, on the contrarv, endeavoured so to arrange traction that it would act uponl
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