A Treatise on Fractures, Luxations, and Other Affections of the BonesDesault, P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph)
Science
A Treatise on Fractures, Luxations, and Other Affections of the Bones
Desault, P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph)
Dislocations; Fractures; Surgery
74. Another accident which rarely occurs in practice, respecting which
but little is to be found in surgical writings, and with which Desault
occasionally met, is, a considerable emphysema, suddenly appearing
at the time of reduction. In the midst of those powerful extensions,
rendered necessary by the ancient state of the luxation, a tumour
suddenly appears under the pectoralis major. By a rapid increase it
extends itself towards the hollow of the arm-pit, the whole of which it
soon occupies. It then propagates itself in a backward direction, and,
in the space of a few minutes, its bulk is sometimes equal to that of
the head of an infant. A practitioner, if unacquainted with the nature
of this accident, might take it for an aneurism, produced by a sudden
rupture of the axillary artery, in consequence of the violence done to
that vessel by the extensions of the limb. But, if attention be paid to
the resistance of the tumour, to its want of pulsation, to the place of
its first appearance, (which is usually under the pectoralis major, and
not under the hollow of the arm-pit, to which it only propagates itself
afterwards, as Desault has observed in similar cases that fell under
his notice), to the action of the pulse still continuing, unless the
patient should faint from debility, as happened to the subject of the
following case, which we had occasion to witness at the amphitheatre,
sometime previous to the death of Desault, and to the colour of the
skin which suffers no change; if these circumstances be attended to,
it will be difficult not to distinguish one of these accidents from
the other. In that now under consideration, discutients applied to the
tumour, such, for example, as vegeto-mineral water, and a gentle and
regular compression made by the bandage intended to support the arm
after reduction, are the most efficacious means that art can employ.
CASE XI. Simon Cerisiat, sixty years of age, presented himself on the
nineteenth of December, 1794, as the subject of a public consultation,
which, every day preceded the clinical lecture of Desault, to receive
advice for a luxation inwards, which he had suffered a month and a half
before, and for the reduction of which no attempt had been yet made.
Convinced, by the example of luxations more ancient, of the
practicability of reducing this, Desault undertook it immediately in
the presence of his pupils.
The patient being laid on a table, firmly fixed and covered with a
mattress, great motions were impressed on the luxated limb upward,
forward, and outward, with a view to destroy the adhesions contracted
with the surrounding parts. Extensions were then made in the manner
already mentioned (66 and 67).
Nothing was gained by the first attempt, the head remaining immoveable,
in the midst of the efforts to displace it. Further motions were made
in every direction, to break if possible, the attachments which held
it; and these were followed by further extensions.
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