REKNITTING BROKEN BONES

Evening Star, Issue 16629, 11 January 1918, Page 5

REKNITTING BROKEN BONES

WONDERFUL TREATMENT OF CRUSHED BODIES. [By Sommer vm/tc Story, in ‘World’s Work.’] Those who are s maimed by tho war include not only the blind and such as are minus an arm or a leg, but those who are otherwise severely injured. ' There are many other who have lost the use of limbs, whose hand or arm is crushed; others whose limbs are withered or shortened owing to fracture of the bone, or who suffer from injury to the spine, causing a defect in 'the frame. Many of them will have to go through life with withered arm or shortened leg, with atrophied hand or with head on. one side. Sometimes these cases are cared; very often they are not. Many of tho injuries are. so intricate that the surgeon gets acquainted with them too late to remedy matters; sometimes ho does what he can under difficulties be never dreamed of. The wounds of this war have bad no parallel in surgical records, and often enough the doctor has no time to devote to tho study of individual cases. Happily, there are far fewer of these cases that remain permanently maimed than there used to be. I have lately seen some very extraordinary euros and improvements in this category of wounds, and it is not too much to say that the SCIENCE OF ORTHOPAEDICS is being revolutionised. In other words, men are being cured effectively and fairly speedily of ankylosis, of fractures, of various forms of shortening and maiming, by means of special braces and supports applied to them after the surgeon has done ibis work. There are cases that tho surjgeon hod given up, as he could do no j more, in which suppleness has been roJ stored to limbs, flexibility to hands and fingers, and the patient has been restored to a better condition of health consequent on the normal use of the limbs. The person who is doing this in a modest clinic in Paris is a lady, but not a lady doctor. Miss Grace Cassette is technical directress of a society called the French-American Corrective Surgical Appliance Committee. She devotes herself to the treatment of fractures, ankylosis of the members, and similar types of wounds in co-operation with the surgeon. Her work, indeed, is of invaluable aid to tho surgeons. Started only some six or eight months ago, she has already treated over 200 men in this clinic i alone, but she has aided some 8,000 in all. ■ The increasing utility of her work is being i proved to such an extent that demands for help and appliances from the surgeons and hospitals are rapidly increasing. Miss Cassette, who only a few weeks ago received the Legion of Honor from the French Government, has now be on appointed specialist to tho 20th. Army region, with a rank equivalent to chief surgeon Of the first class, and she is organising a line of hospitals behind the front, whore cases like those she has made her specialty will be treated. TALENT FOR RELIEVING SUFFERING. Before the war this clever lady was >an artist-. She studied anatomy as an artist, and not with a view to a medical career. When the war broke out she offered her services to tho American ambulance in' Paris, and began to learn many things j that ordinary people would not think had to do with the taking care of wounded j men. “ I found that I bad a talent,” she j says, modestly, “ for making contrivances to relieve suffering.” Her success, in fact, j comes to some extent from a great gift of improvisation. At first this talent was shown in tho making of simple kinds of splints for holding up an arm or a leg, and ■relieving pain in it as the man lay in bed, and when the process of resection was taking place. All sorts of developments and devices followed. Miss Gassetts improved upon the frames that are put ’ over the beds to hold a brace, with a weight attached, to a pulley arrangement keeping the fractured- arm or leg stretched. The stretching in these apparatuses gradually increases with added weight, thus preventing rigidity and shortening of the limb. Men who have had their limbs placed in such splints have .often found relief in a quarter of an hour. Several thousands of these improved appliances have recently been ordered by the French Government. Other cases presented themselvs of men who left the hospital needing remedial apI plianoes for withered or distorted limbs, 'fractured bones, and other troubles. Scon the work grew to such an extertt. special contrivances having to be devised for special cases, that Miss Cassette found that she must get a committee together and organise a factory for making the various kinds of instruments she required. To-day, besides her consulting room, this committee have workshops where instruments made of wood, rubber, leather, and springs, aluminium, and other materials are being turned out in large quantities. There is a designer on the spot, while the various stages of each case are photographed and radiographed, so that progress can be studied. EACH CASE DIFFERENT.

Miss Gassett© receives each morning men who either come of their own accord at the suggestion of comrades, or arc sent by the surgeons who have treated them. Almost every fresh case requires special study. When the man has been examined he is supplied provisionally with a mechanism suited to his special injury, which is changed or modified at succeeding visits as the case requires. Tn the many cases that occur of a hand that has become stiSened, and the fingers of which cannot be opened through injury to bone and muscles, the hand and arm are placed in a splint, the fingers being tied 'to hinges or little bands on screws, which are gradually tightened to straighten out the fingers and render them again movable and supple. Miss Gassette immobilises as far as possible the injured parts, and each improvement that is attained is supported and held by the appliance. ILLUSTRATIVE CASES. A few cases will serve to illustrate the methods followed by Miss Gassette. A farmer sent to her by Professor Quenu, a well-known French surgeon, had had the bone just below the shoulder shot away. Though the nerves and muscles had been saved, the patient could not raise his arm, and carried it in a sling when he went to Miss Gassette. An elastic belt was put on him, on one side of which w r as fastened an aluminium placque into which a flexible steel was fixed, bent under his arm so as to arrange a cuff and forearm support, shoulder-cap, etc. By' this means he could use his arm. It is hoped that in two or three years’ time a false joint will have been formed, and that the instrument will no longer be needed. Another case is that of a poor fellow who could not raise his head, owing to the muscles of his neck having been cut by a ball. The head is gradually lifted by means of a support, and special movements of the head are made to strengthen the muscles, each increase of strength being reinforced by a period of immobilisation in the apparatus, which is proportionately raised. Another case is that of a man, in hospital whose leg was shortened through injury to the kneecap and ankle. The limb was suspended by an apparatus that enabled the doctor to drain the wound and save the leg from amputation. In 10 months 10 centimetres of bone have grown. A particularly interesting case is that of a man who before the war was a slaughterman porter. Five vertebrae were broken. The apparatus is arr elaborate device of straps and springs, which keeps the vertebra; in place while they are being reknit, and the day that this was put on him he felt so well that he went for a long walk. This was highly imprudent, but no ill consequences ensued, and h© has progressed so much that he has returned to work, though naturally not at his old occupation. °A few days, ago he went to the clinic to have his corset relined and repaired, and while this was being done he lay helpless and unable to move for .some hours. As soon as he had been laced into his corset again he walked about as if nothing were the matter with him. It is now only a question of time for the vertebrae to consolidate.