AMATEUR SURGEONS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7697, 21 March 1887, Page 3

AMATEUR SURGEONS.

W. Troves, the eminent surgeon, lolls the following story in the Law-H :— A photographer and his wife were recently returning home from Australia in a sailing piiin which carried no surgeon. Oft Capo Horn a terrible storm occurred, in which pjic of the crew was killed, tho captain and mn.te were much injured, and the photographer BUBliiined a compound fracsure of the lower arm, which in fom-dnys became gangrenous. In a onsullatioii between (he photographer, the pccond mate, and the carpenter, it was decided to amputate the arm well above the elbow, the instruments available btinp a srw, a sljoe knife, and ft smjl ncedlci The nho-

fogropher tonic ,1 sent on a heap of sails on tho deck, which was covered with snow. None of the party had any knowledge of anatomy or had ever seen a surgical operation — a point M. Troves pronounces to have been much in favor of the patient. The carpenter began the operation virtu te ojjicii, but, losing nerve, ceded the shoe knifo to tho second mate. They had noted, before beginning, tho position of tho pulsating artery, ami worn careful not to sever it. Haying "exposed" it they ligatised it, and. probably the vein and nervo also, by means of the sail-needle, and -then went on cntting, but with inlinite caution, .not knowing with how many similar blood vessels Providence might have been pleased to endow. the human arm. They naturally found none such, and Mr. I'Treves remarks, with bnmov, that it was greatly to their credit that they did not mistake the ulnar nerve for a bloodvessel. Having completed their cutting and sawing, they brought the ends of the severed parts together with infinite care and exactness, and sewed them up with a smaller noodle anil silk, supplied by the photographer's wife, who appears to have boon standing by. The amputation took the uninual timo of one hour and fortyfive minntes. Amputations of the arm, M. Treves remarks, have been completed in less time than this (they usually take a very few minutes), but none has ever been performed ' with greater ingenuity mid coinage. There is no stranger scene recorded in the annals of surgery than this photographer sitting on a heap of sails on a snow-clad deck, in the midst of the Atlantic Ocean, critically surveying, during one [hour and forty-five minutes, the amputation of his own arm by a ship's carpenter and mate with a shoe-knife and a saw. It is satisfactory to know that the brave photographer is now quite well, and that he possesses, owing to the ingenuity and cave of his kindly shipmates, as sound and useful a stump as any surgeon in London could have provided liim with." Ship captains are officially provided with a "medical guide"; but if they avo to take to capital surgery, they should at least be furnished with charts of tlie human body, and some better instrument than a shoe knife.