A few months prior to these experiments in Vienna, there died at Watford, one of the best known bone-setters, Mr. Richard Hutton of Watford, Herts. The Lancet in recording his decease on January 6th, 1871, makes the following admission in a very different tone it assumed barely two years before. It calls him a successful bone-setter, for “successful he certainly was, and it were folly to deny it, in some cases which had baffled the skill of the best surgeons; but his failures were many, though these of course were little heard of. Following the general practice of bone-setters he diagnosed a dislocation, or several dislocations, in every case in which he was consulted; and when, fortunately, the case was one of chronic thickness about a joint, with possibly partial ankylosis or adhesion of tendons, the greatest success attended his rough manipulations in many instances. Every now and then Hutton got into difficulties by attacking an acutely inflamed joint, or by lighting up mischief in an old case; but as a rule he was too cautious thus to be caught out. We have seen some of his successes and some of his failures, and the redeeming feature about him was that though an empiric, he was not an extortionate one, and in many cases refused remuneration altogether.”
It was through this Mr. Hutton that the Lancet was enabled to publish a portion of the system practised by him, and which has been since partly followed by the faculty; but even the Lancet, after admitting the skill of the Bone-setters and their success, cannot repress the habitual sneer at their successful and humble operations. We have an instance of this, when recording the death in May, 1875, of a celebrated Bone-setter, of the name of Burbidge, who died in Frimley, Surrey, where local tradition ascribed numerous cures to his manipulative skill. “We do not know” says the leading medical organ “whether any spells or incantations were used at the ceremonies in which he operated, as practised by some of his genus!” The writer must have been dreaming of the medical practitioners in the time of the Pharaohs when he penned this. Mr. Burbidge’s father and grandfather were celebrated Bone-setters.
Another famous and “good Bone-setter” is recorded by Mr. C. Waterton, in his Essays on Natural History before quoted: “About half a mile from Wakefield’s Mammoth Prison, on the Halifax Road, nearly opposite to a pretty Grecian summer-house, apparently neglected, resides Mr. Joseph Crowther, the successful Bone-setter. He has passed the prime of life, being now in his seventy-seventh year, but unfortunately he has no son to succeed him. I might fill volumes with the recital of cases which he has brought to a happy conclusion. Two in particular, dreadful and hopeless to all appearance, have placed his wonderful abilities in so positive a light before my eyes, that I consider him at the head of his profession as a Bone-setter, and as a rectifier of the most alarming dislocations which are perpetually occurring to man in his laborious journey through this disastrous vale of tears.”
The published accounts of voyagers and travellers are full of anecdotes of those who practise “bone-setting” in different parts of the world. There is a wonderful similarity in their modes of treatment as thus detailed. An instance or two will suffice. Mons. C. S. Sonnini, in his Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, published, at the beginning of this century, on his journey towards Abyssinia, was sent for in his character as a physician to attend the second officer in command at Miniet, who had broken his leg three days before. He found that the leg had been set by a Copt, whose “curious” mode of treating the case was thought worthy of chronicling by the traveller. “The patient,” he tells us, “was laid on the ground without either mattress, bed, or carpet, but merely on a bed of sand. His leg and thigh were extended and fixed between stakes driven into the earth, which also supported a small brick wall, raised on each side in such a manner that the fractured limb was confined in a piece of mason work, where it was to remain till the completion of the cure. In order to promote the formation of the callus of the fracture, the doctor had made a sort of cement, oil, and the white of eggs, which he every day applied to the leg.”
Friar Moulton gives a recipe of a similar kind to be applied whilst the bone is “setting.” Cateron, in his Travels in Algeria, gives a instance of the same mode of treatment. He writes, “On our return, I called upon the Schiek, Lisaid-Mansor, I found him stretched on a couch built of stonework, cemented with clay, covered only with a few rags, and with a stone for a pillow. His leg surrounded with bandages and herbs, was firmly tied up in and kept straight by a thick slip of bark. His foot was immovably fixed to a stake, stuck in the ground. He is obliged to remain in this condition until the bones are united. This severe treatment is not unfrequently fatal, but, if the Arab has a good constitution, and gangrene does not set in, he recovers with a limb more or less straight. The poor Schiek was busy flipping off with a handkerchief tied to a stick, the swarms of flies which were attracted to his wound. At the foot of the couch was the Tebib or surgeon, himself reciting incantations like his Egyptian predecessors, and prayers over the broken limb. He appeared much put out by my entrance, for the Arabs think that all Europeans understand medicine; but he was re-assured when he saw I looked on without interfering.”
There have been many, and are still Bone-setters of eminence in different parts of the country, who are ready with their welcome and useful services, when other Denhams cry out for “a good bone-setter.” The benefits they have conferred in the past on the sufferers by external violence will be indicated by the testimony of well-known public personages in the next chapter.
PLATE II.—DISLOCATIONS.
1. Dislocated Finger. 2. Dislocated Thumb. 3. Dislocation of hand and radius forwards. 4. Dislocation of radius and ulna forwards. 5. Subglenoid dislocation of humerus. 6. Outward appearance of ditto. 7. Subcoracoid dislocation of humerus. 8. Dislocation of radius forwards (outward appearance).