Medical testimony in regard to the proper mechanical treatment of joint diseases.

  • Henry Gassett Davis
Date:
[1862?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical testimony in regard to the proper mechanical treatment of joint diseases. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    * elastic extension is the true and philosophical method of overcoming muscular contraction.' He tells us he has ' inveuted an apparatus for applying these principles to diseased hip, knee, aDd other joints,' ' a method of treating this disease [morbus coxarius] which I have pursued for twelve years; and as it has never been [thoroughly] brought before the profession, it becomes necessary to describe it minutely.' Theu follows a lengthy description of the instrument, its application, &c, &c. We should also here notice that he has introduced, with the instrument, an important arrangement of material for all surgical pur- poses, viz., corrugated cast steel, giving strength with lightness. Thus, surgery is indebted to Dr. Davis not only for the invention of an apparatus really yet unimproved upon, but also for the intro- duction of a method of treatment based on the true pathology of the disease, and the principles upon which successful treatment depends in all its stages. The essential parts of the apparatus are, simply, means of exerting a continuous-extending force on one side, and a resisting, counter-ex- tending one on the other. Many persons cannot comprehend in what really consists the difference between Dr. Davis's apparatus and some of the means previously employed, because the word extension misleads them. They do not make the distinction between the force that fix- edly sustains a limb in a position previously more or less extended, and the force that is actually extending all the time; i. e., that exerts a constant pulling power, instead of merely preventing immovably the retrocession of pulling previously exerted. Now this continued or 'elastic' extension, as, merely to distinguish it, it might be called, has been introduced into the treatment of hip-joint disease by Dr. Davis. Whether it is attained by position, or weights, or spring- power, does not change the priuciple; but Dr. Davis had brought even his mechanical arrangement to perfection before others entered the field. Indeed, priority here has not been attempted to be proved by any one else, as far as we know. Our author candidly tells us that he had used it in private practice for about a mouth, when, on the 14th of June, 1860, he was allowed to apply it for the first time in Charing Cross Hospital. Early in the year 1860, for a considerable time before the full description in the April No. of the Monthly, Dr. Scudder had, at Dr. Davis's request, as we kuow from his own lips, taken one of the instruments to England, for the purpose of exhibiting it to the profession there, and in Pari6. Adhesive plaster and rubber were used by Dr. Davis from the first. The only quotation we will take the space to make is the following, from the American Medical