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

by John Stewart Milne

A ladder was padded with leather, and on this the patient was laid on his back. The ankles were tied to the ladder by soft strong bands.

The arms were bound to the sides of the patient but not to the ladder.

By means of a rope or ropes affixed to the lower end of the ladder ([Fig. 33]) it was raised along the gable of a high house or a high tower, or the mast of a ship fixed in the ground. The ropes should run over a pulley or a winch.

For the sake of completeness we may conclude with a short account of the materials used for the treatment of congenital clubfoot by Hippocrates.

Most cases are remediable. After pulling and pushing the parts into position they are to be retained with cerate, made with a full proportion of rezin, with compresses or pads similar to those described in the treatment of fractures, and soft bandages applied in sufficient quantity but not too tight. The foot should appear to incline a little outwards.

A sole of leather not very hard, or of lead, is to be bound on as you are about to finish the bandaging, not in contact with the skin. The bandaging is to be carried up to the top of the calf, and the bandages are to be finished by stitching. A small shoe of lead is to be bound on externally to the bandaging, having the same shape as the Chian slippers had. This, however, should not be necessary. Thus this method requires neither cutting (tenotomy) nor burning nor any other complex means, for such cases yield sooner to treatment than one would believe. However they are to be fairly mastered only by time and not until the body has grown up in the natural shape, and then recourse is to be had to a shoe.

The most suitable are the buskins, which derive their name from traveling through mud, for this sort of shoe does not yield to the foot but the foot yields to it. A shoe shaped like the Cretan is also suitable.

(As Galen, the great admirer and annotator of Hippocrates, confesses that he is unable to give an exact account of either the Chian slippers, the buskins, or the Cretan shoes, we may leave it to individual imagination to conjecture their appearance.)