V.
Cheering splendor yet attends us,
Mid these scenes of deepest gloom;
'Tis our 'hope in Christ' defends us
From the terrors of the tomb.
When we leave this vale of sadness,
'Tis to share unmingled gladness:
O the happy, happy greeting—
Jesus and our friends then meeting!
J. F. H.
[NOTES OF A SURGEON.][1]
NUMBER ONE.
THE DISLOCATION.
The reduction of a dislocated limb, in a person of muscular frame, is one of the most fearful and difficult operations in surgery; and in a lad or a female, there is much in the attending circumstances to excite the liveliest interest of the spectator. To hear the bone click, as it returns to its place; to behold the relief which is instantly experienced; the happiness so vividly depicted in the countenance; the inclination to immediate repose—every feather seeming to be a pillow to some over-strained and exhausted muscle—one cannot help cordially uniting in the feelings of the restored sufferer; nor can he restrain the smile which mantles his features, and is reflected in the lineaments of the surrounding surgeons.
In a strong man, where the muscles are rigid, and every fibre seems to be converted into a wire to resist the force exerted on them, the ceremony is one of distressing cruelty. The inquisition can scarcely furnish any thing more appalling, and certainly not the practice of surgery. The pain of an amputation may be more acute; but its very acuteness assures you that it will soon be over. The edge of the knife itself is an index, keen as the scythe of Time, and faithful as his march, of the progressive succession of the moments of trial; a fiëry monitor, which every instant sinks deeper, and will soon, very soon in the reality, but late, as it always must be, in the reckoning of the sufferer, reach its unswerving limits, the bone. And here the pain of the operation in a great measure ceases; for it is hardly necessary to state, that the sawing of this structure is not actually attended by any of the horrors with which vulgar apprehension has invested it. The ligature of the arteries, the dressing of the truncated member, etc., may each occasion a momentary anguish. But as to the mere pain of the operation, it is trivial, in comparison with that which an athletic man experiences in the reduction of a dislocated limb, which has been any length of time displaced.