Transcriber’s Note: The figures appear to have been mis-numbered: there is no Fig. 23, nor any reference to one in the text. THE APPARATUS USED BY THE GREEKS AND ROMANS IN THE SETTING OF FRACTURES AND THE REDUCTION OF DISLOCATIONS. BY JOHN S. MILNE, General Practitioner in Hartlepool (a smoky town on the Northeast Coast of England). REPRINT FROM THE INTERSTATE MEDICAL JOURNAL, Vol. XVI., Nos. 2 and 3. ST. LOUIS: INTERSTATE MEDICAL JOURNAL CO. 1909. THE APPARATUS USED BY THE GREEKS AND ROMANS IN THE SETTING OF FRACTURES AND THE REDUCTION OF DISLOCATIONS. By JOHN S. MILNE, General Practitioner in Hartlepool (a smoky town on the Northeast Coast of England). Let me point out that the scope of the paper does not cover the whole ground of the wide knowledge possessed by the ancients on the subject of fractures and dislocations. It is merely an enumeration of the apparatus used in the treatment of these, with short extracts indicating the method of employing them. The authorities on the subject are Hippocrates, in his works on Fractures and Articulations, 460 B. C.; Galen in his commentaries on these (130-200 A. D.); Celsus (about 20 A. D.); a chapter by Heliodorus preserved in the works of Oribasius (325 A. D.), and the little encyclopedia of Paulus Ægineta (6th Century A. D.) I have also taken a few illustrations from the Armamentarium of Scultetus. In the treatment of fractures the ancients employed, as we do to-day, splints, pads and bandages. Hippocrates in his book on _Fractures_ gives a very complete account of the method of applying these. First of all, the limb was smeared with a waxy composition, called cerate, in order to prevent the bandages from slipping. The bones having been got into position by means of extension and other manipulations, a roller bandage soaked in cerate (Fig. 1) was fixed by one or two turns round the seat of the fracture, and then carried upward for several turns. (Fig. 2.) Next, a second waxed bandage was applied, beginning as before at the fracture, passing downwards for several turns (Fig. 3), and then upwards to end at the same spot as the first bandage. Next, elongated pads, formed of folded linen and stiffened with cerate, (Fig. 4) were laid along the limb in such a way as to cover it completely, and fixed by the application of roller bandages which had as before been dipped in cerate.