28. This case may throw considerable light on the difficult question relative to amputations at the joint. But this is not the place to state the ideas of Desault on that point of practice.
I will only observe, that in many cases of gun-shot wounds, a similar treatment would probably save life, without exposing the wounded to the dangers of an operation, in which so considerable a portion of the system cannot be removed with impunity, and would secure to them a limb, for the preservation of which they ought not to shrink from the pains and hazards of a tedious treatment. To sacrifice a part for the preservation of the whole, is the last resource of the art. It is necessary, before resolving on this, to exhaust those previous ones that might restore the whole of our organs to life and their proper functions.
MEMOIR VI.
ON THE FRACTURE OF THE LOWER EXTREMITY OF THE HUMERUS, WITH A SEPARATION OF THE CONDYLS.
1. Fractures of the humerus, accompanied with a separation of the condyls, appear to have escaped the notice of most authors who have written on diseases of the bones. The ancients have transmitted nothing to us on this point. Petit, Duverney, and Bell, among the moderns, have made no mention of it. Heister adverts to this fracture of the bone, only to express an unfavourable prognostic respecting it, without determining the mode in which it is to be remedied. Yet it is by no means rare to meet with examples of it in practice. Desault, in particular, has had frequent occasions to observe it.
§ I.
OF ITS VARIETIES AND SIGNS.
2. These fractures, like those of the condyls of the os femoris, are rarely the effect of a counter-stroke. They are almost always produced by the immediate action of external bodies; such, for instance, as a fall on the joint of the arm; the wheel of a carriage passing over this part, &c. &c.