An Extraordinary Scene off Cape Horn

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 118, 12 April 1887, Page 3

An Extraordinary Scene off Cape Horn

M. Treves, the eminent surgeon, tells; the following story in the Lancet : — A photographer and bis wife were recently returning home from Australia in a sailing ship which carried no surgeon. Off Cape Horn a terrible storm occurred in which one of the crew was killed, the captain aud mate were much injured, ana the photographer sustained a compound fracture of the lower arm, which in four days became gangrenous. In a consultation between the photographer the second mate, and the carpenter, it was decided to amputate the arm well abeve the elbow, the instruments available being a saw, shoe knife, and a vail needle. The photographer took a seat on a heap of sails on the deck, which was covered with snow. None of the party had any knowledge of anatomy or had ever seen a surgical operation — a point M. Trevefl pronounces to have been much in f >your of the patient. The carpenter began the operation virtute officii, but losing nerve, ceded the shoe knife t > the second mate. They had noted, before , beginning, the position of the pulsating artery t and were careful not to flcver it. Having 'exposed 1 it they ligatised it and probably the vein and nerve also* by means of the sail needle and then went en cutting, but with iufinte caution, not knowing with how many similar blood-vessel« Providence might have been pleased to endow the human arm. They naturally ftuiud none such, and M. Troves remarks, with humour, that it was greatly to their credit that they did not mistake the ulner nerve for a blood vessel. Having completed their sawing and cutting, they brought the ends of the several parts together with infinite care and exactness, and sewed them up with a smaller needle and eilk, supplied by the photographer's wife who appears to have standing by The amputation took the unusual time of one hour and fourty-five minutes. Amputations of the arm, M. Treves remarks* have been completed in less time than this (they usually take a ▼cry few minutes minutes), but none has ever been performed with greater ingenuity and courage. There it no stranger scene recorded in the annals of surgery.