Mipuytn ' In one of his clinical lessons. " I have repeated it often, and I repeat it for the T the facts which I have observed, chiefly in ISM. i.xi.v L830, thitmy opinion thanwesai-f < the same view when he says, " I /meed the sum of human misery will be most materially lessened by permitting no iguous case to be subjected to the trial of pn s ( i the liml,.':ind in fact all the leading of modern times, proclaim the same AVAIL tiling. That exceptions must sometimes be made is undoubted; but still they are only exceptions, and rniv ones too.
Cases of compound fracture near the kiuv peculiarly call for amputation, if the bone be split into the The results which we obtained might most likely have been more satisfactory if the army had made another campaign. Our bad hygienic condition deprived us of the improvements made in surgery during the last halfcentury. But, even in those exceptional cases which result in consolidation, the condition of the limb is not I cannot avoid giving the following remarks of M. Begin: " All military surgeons have begun by wishing to preserve, but as their experience increased, and their observation extended, they amputated more, and they gain the conviction that they are right. At the outset of my career I amputated less than I did towards the end of my service, as surgeon-in-chief of great establishments.
There are certain cases, very often exaggerated, of wounded who pretend to have preserved limbs which the surgeon wished to remove; I have been present very often at the miserable death of person's who have refused the operation, or who, they thought, would avoid it. The small number of the first, who boasted loudly, cannot compensate for those much more numerous of the second, which caused me much sorrow. And besides, how often are these preserved members not a pitiable burden for those who carry them? Ask the surgeon of the Invalides if he is not asked eveiy year by some of these old soldiers to deliver them from the parts which are. an annoyance to them, and which cause them inconvenience and incessant pain.
I think it a great misfortune that our military surgeons should allow themselves to be seduced by some of the assertions which you have heard; this forgetfulness of the experience of their most illustrious predecessors, will cause certainly the loss of many men, which the art, exercised with a more reasonable energy, might save." "I know that there exist examples of recoveries with shortening, and fistula} remaining for years," says Baudens; " but to save two with fractured femurs, and to heal them imperfectly, we will lose thirty, of whom fifteen or more would have survived immediate amputation." MITIES. ng testimony from hie. M. Kibes, as is well known, SC of recovery either alter compound fracture, or amputation in tlie middle of the femur. among 4,000 cases which he examined in the Invalides ie period of his first visit: Imt during subsequent,-iscs there of "cured" compound I, five of whom died at'trr many years <>f irreat suffc ini: from the injury, and the other two he lost sight of, as they left the institution; but when last they were in a grievous plight, and he says, " it is able that th. >ldiers died from the effects of their accidents, and if they did not. their condition must beg till more wretched." In all the seven < there was union certainly, but it was attended by much deformity, necrosis, and caries.