Electro-physiology and electro-therapeutics : showing the best methods for the medical uses of electricity / By Alfred C. Garratt.
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The author has seen but few cases of un-united fracture of
bone since he has been more particularly interested in this spe-
cial practice of electro-therapeutics; but he can add, that no case
of these few has ever failed to be speedily united by means of
electro-puncture, aided by the passage of some stronger currents,
primary or secondary, through the skin and muscle coverings.
The following is given as the mode of proceeding:—:
Captain G. fell, more than two years before, from the staging
of a new ship he was then building, and broke his thigh at its
upper third. He was cared for, the best possibly, by our most
able Burgeons; but he was restless and irritable under the long
restraint, and, after months, it was found that the bone was
still un-united, and, therefore, the seton, with tonics, together
with magneto-electricity, were resorted to, and persevered in
for a long time. His limb had been so long retained in splint,
however, that pseudo-anchylosis of the knee joint was the result,
and this then rendered the fracture an almost necessary artifi-
cial joint, and still more hopeless of ever being kept quiet long
enough to unite. But, in the first place, I had provided for the
captain the improved surgeon's bed for fractured limbs, upon
which he was comfortably adjusted for a siege of twenty-one
days, which was all I demanded for a fair trial in his case, and
at the same time prognosticated as favorably as I could. To
this he agreed to submit. The broken right thigh was then pre-
pared with the sustaining broad roller from toes to hip, and the
limb placed once more in the same excellent splint that had
been used by the surgeon in the first instance when he set the
fracture. Then the long size electro-puncture needles were in-
serted through the roller, skin, fascia, and muscles, the one enter-
ing rather at the upper inner edge of the rectus femoris muscle,
avoiding the femoral vessels and nerve trunks, and carried down
until its point touched the bone as near the fracture as possible,
while the other needle was inserted on the outer side of the
thigh, through the vastus externus, and pushed forward until its
point reached the bone. These needles were of fine gold, and
insulated, except at their points; or zmtempered steel needles,
some three or four inches long, heavily gilded for a half inch at