X-RAY PICTURE OF A DISLOCATED ELBOW.
If the field of its usefulness continues to expand at its present rate, it will not be long before its use as a diagnostic measure will be as valuable to the medical man as it now is to the surgeon.
By such instruments of precision as this, and others less conspicuous, the old elements of intelligent inference and argument by analogy and exclusion are rendered of less value, and a rapid approach is made to scientific exactitude in surgery as well as medicine. All this has attained a far higher quality and scope in the last quarter of this century than in any other period of the world’s history, and we may look to great advances in the coming century, in all life-conserving and remedial measures whereby the race may enjoy a larger measure of relief as well as immunity from the onslaught of disease and the results of accident.
There is shown here for illustration a photographic picture of a limb, taken by the X-ray now growing familiar to every one. It should be borne in mind that while it is a simple matter for the casual observer to note obvious solutions of continuity in bones, or the presence of foreign bodies, this is not the chief item of usefulness to the surgeon, and certainly not to the medical practitioner. A special training is required to study and interpret the findings and appearances of the tissues, their altered relationships, densities, and many other matters entirely insignificant to the uneducated among medical men or laity.
Again, the picture here shown is similar in outline to but a reversal of the shading seen through the fluoroscope by direct vision, when the greatest skill is required in noting the significance of altered states in the denser or softer tissues.
When suits for malpractice are instituted against surgeons it is not to be admitted that the evidence or findings of the “highly intelligent” but not technically skilled witness can have the slightest weight as proving the condition of tissues of which they are very ignorant, not only physiologically but more so pathologically.