Nothing, however, is more convenient than a cushion or something similar, either of wool or linen and not hard. It is to be made hollowed along its middle, and laid below the limb. In any case a shawl should encircle both splint and limb, as children are swathed in bed.
Paulus Ægineta describes the box splints as of wood or earthenware. Some applied them only in cases of compound fracture. A better means of steadying the limb, he thinks, is to make a long pillow of a garment, and to fold it up at the sides, round the limb, and to steady the whole with pillows. The garment should be lined with a skin, to catch the embrocations.
Galen says that they should be rounded externally and hollowed inside. They were made of different kinds of wood.
Celsus says that they should have in their lower part a hole for the escape of discharge, and they should have a foot plate.
Glossocomium of Galen. This ingenious and useful splint, says Galen, had been invented by the practitioners of his time.
It took its name, he says, from the Attic name for a box used for storing papers of value or which one wished to conceal or to carry on a journey, and was variously spelled glossocomum or glossocomium or with two t’s instead of two s’s. ([Fig. 9.])
It might be applied to the femur or the tibia, and was to be used continually till callus had formed.
Galen gives a full description of it, but its principle is best understood from a drawing such as that given by Vidius or Scultetus.
On rotating the handle the upper and lower fragments are simultaneously pulled apart.