Backwoods Surgery & Medicine

by Charles Stuart Moody

Right here I want to state that it is unnecessary to try to pull a broken bone out of the socket in order to set a fracture. A persistent pull of some fifty pounds will soon overcome the contraction of the muscles and the bone will be replaced. The acting surgeon must at the same time grasp the limb at the site of the break and knead the two ends into place. You will know when they are in place by the absence of inequality at the point of break.

After the bone had been replaced, I placed my splints in position and bound them on, using strips of sheet torn up for bandages. Any stout cloth will do as well. They may be placed in the ordinary manner, each wrap beside the other, or they may be run on in continuous form, permitting each ascending turn to half overlap the one below it. Care must be taken that the pressure is equal in all parts of the bandage and that it is placed tight enough to prevent any slipping of the splints.

The next problem was to get the man out. Again the cedar forest came to my relief. I felled another and somewhat larger tree, sufficiently large to permit placing the injured man in a boat-shaped section of the bark. This was made longer than his body and a semi-circular board fitted in each end. When the whole was completed it resembled a rude trough.

This trough was lined with blankets until it was quite soft. Two poles twelve feet in length were lashed to either side and the man securely lashed in the contrivance. When we were ready to start two steady pack animals were brought out and the litter with its burden swung in such manner that the animals could wind down the steep rocky trail with the burden between them. In this manner we jogged down the mountainside all day, our patient laughing and enjoying his pipe as though he were the guest of honor in some triumphal procession.

While cedar was mentioned as having been used in the above case, the reader will appreciate that any sort of timber with a tough bark will answer equally well.

There is one important fact that should always be borne in mind in the treatment of all fractures, and that is that at least the two adjoining joints should be fixed. If it is the thigh that is fractured, the hip, knee, and ankle should be included in the splint. If the leg, then the knee and ankle. The same rule holds good with fractures of the forearm or arm.

If timber with tough bark is not available, or in open countries where no timber grows, a broken bone may be nicely splinted by using small round sticks. Never use a clapboard unless it is extremely well padded; even then it is undesirable from the fact that it is liable to press upon some bony point and cause trouble. Also it is very liable to slip and permit your fractured bone to become displaced.

To fix a limb by using round sticks, wrap the limb well in soft cloth; then, having cut your sticks the right length, place them at regular intervals about the limb and bind as before. In the absence of anything better, two leather gun scabbards make quite effective splints.

What has been said with regard to fractures of the lower limb will apply with equal force to breaks of the upper except, of course, that the case is one of far less gravity. In cases of fracture of the arm, either above or below the elbow, the injured person can make himself quite comfortable by pinning the bottom of his coat to his shoulder and placing the injured arm in the V-shaped sling thus formed.

The treatment of compound fractures is one that requires some "nerve" on the part of the acting surgeon and a great deal of fortitude in the injured person. A compound fracture of the leg or thigh is the most terrible accident, short of death, that can befall a man in the woods. Unless great care is exercised the man will die, either shortly from septic poisoning, or almost immediately from shock.