The apparatus used by the Greeks and Romans in the setting of fractures and the reduction of dislocations

Transcriber’s Note: The figures appear to have been mis-numbered: there is no Fig. 23, nor any reference to one in the text. Figures can be clicked for larger versions.

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.


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.