Mochlicus (31-35)

When the foot is dislocated, either alone, or with the epiphysis, the displacement is more apt to be inward. If not reduced, in the course of time the parts of the hips, thigh, and leg, opposite the dislocation, become attenuated. Reduction:—As in dislocation at the wrist; but the extension requires to be very powerful. Treatment:—Agreeably to the rule laid down for the other joints. Less apt to be followed by serious consequences than the wrist, if kept quiet. Diet restricted, as being in an inactive state. Those occurring at birth, or during adolescence, observe the rule formerly stated.

With regard to slight congenital dislocations, some of them can be rectified, especially club-foot. There is more than one variety of club-foot. The treatment consists in modeling the foot like a piece of wax; applying resinous cerate, and numerous bandages; or a sole, or a piece of lead is to be bound on, but not upon the bare skin; the adjustment and attitudes to correspond.

If the dislocated bones cause a wound in the skin, and protrude, it is better to let them alone, provided only they are not allowed to hang, nor are compressed. The treatment consists in applying pitched cerate, or compresses dipped in hot wine (for cold is bad in all such cases), and certain leaves; but in winter unwashed wool may be applied as a cover to the part; neither cataplasms nor bandaging; restricted diet. Cold, great weight, compression, violence, restricted position, all such are to be accounted as fatal measures. When treated moderately (they escape), maimed and deformed; for, if the dislocation be at the ankle, the foot is drawn upward, and, if elsewhere, according to the same rule. The bones do not readily exfoliate; for only small portions of them are denuded, and they heal by narrow

Excision, either of articular bones or of pieces of bones, when not high up in the body, but about the foot or the hand, is generally followed by recovery, unless the patient die at once from deliquium animi. Treatment:—As in injuries of the head; warmth.

Sphacelus of the fleshy parts is produced by the tight compression of bleeding wounds, and by pressure in the fractures of bones, and by blackening, arising from bandages. And in those cases in which a portion of the thigh or arm, both the bones and the flesh drop off, many recover, the case being less dangerous than many others. In cases, then, connected with fracture of the bones, the separation of the flesh quickly takes place, but the separation of the bone, at the boundary of its denuded part, is slower in taking place. But the parts below the seat of the injury, and the sound portion of the body, are to be previously taken away (for they die previously), taking care to avoid producing pain, for deliquium animi may occasion death. The bone of the thigh in such a case came away on the eightieth day, but the leg was removed on the twentieth day. The bones of the leg, in a certain case, came away at the middle of the sixtieth