Ununited fracture successfully treated : with remarks on the operation / By Henry J. Bigelow ... With abstracts from Dr. Bigelow's clinical lectures on the subject, and cases. (Reported by Richard H. Derby.).

  • Bigelow, Henry Jacob, 1818-1890.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ununited fracture successfully treated : with remarks on the operation / By Henry J. Bigelow ... With abstracts from Dr. Bigelow's clinical lectures on the subject, and cases. (Reported by Richard H. Derby.). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    UNUNITED FRACTURE SUCCESSFULLY TREATED. The following paper give3 the details of eleven consecutive cases of ununited fracture, successfully treated, with the exception of one, in which the bone was diseased. Such continued success justifies the belief that this operation will effect the desired object with more uniform certainty than any other method now in use. Two cases are appended in illustration of the extent of the osteo- plastic power of the periosteum. In one of these the condyles of the humerus were reproduced after excision. In the other the peri- osteum failed to form a new bridge for the nose, after a rhino- plastic operation. Having failed, in a number of cases, to effect by rest, com- pression, blisters, seton, drilling, excision of bone, dovetailing, &c., a union of ununited fracture of the humerus, and having in mind the experiments of Ollier* for the production of bone from periosteum, I determined, when the opportunity presented, to avail myself of the osteoplastic functiou of this membrane. In trying the experi- ment for the first time (Feb. 14th, 1860), I was not aware that any previous attempt had been made to produce bony union of ununited fractures by preserving the periosteum for that purpose; but in the ensuing spring, at the time of the successful issue of the case allu- ded to, I happened to meet with a paper recently published upon this subject, a superficial perusal of which seemed to show that its author had covered the ground, at least of novelty, in the method. The pamphlet was mislaid, and I thought no more of the matter, but had not infrequent occasion to repeat the operation, with successful result, and annually referred to the subject in my lectures before the class of Harvard University. A report of this method was also published! incidentally in connection with the testimony of the writer in a suit for malpractice, and afterwards alluded to in the Loudon Medical Times and Gazelle4 in which I stated that my own operation had * Gazette Medicate, 1859, Nos. xiv. and xv. t Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. lxix. p. 218. t February 6,1864.