LIMB DEFORMITIES

Hokitika Guardian, 27 July 1932, Page 8

LIMB DEFORMITIES

ADVANCE IN ORTHOPAEDICS. • > LECTURE BY DR, GILLIES. V ' WELLINGTON, July 23. '-y The marvellous advance 'chat has made in orthopaedic suqgery .nice Hippocrates laid ddwn its prinj ciples in the fourth century, 8.C., described by Dr A. Gillies in a eoture befoie the technological secdon of h the, Wellington ■ • iocieVy last night. . W Taking as Ins . subject “Mechanical' uns Physical Aids in - Orthopaedics, .vith 'an Historical Background,’’. Dr Gillies said, that in the: eighteenth century orthopaedics began to movemore quickly and finally with The decline of theological the" more tender view of human suffering supervened, land during the nineteenth century the problem of the cripple bcame not one of suppression but ov .nodical care.;. ’*:• In the middle,of the eighteenth century, Nicolas Andre, professor of medicine in Paris, brought out work'ih two volmpes, entitled “.Orthopaedia,” • -r the art of correcting and; prevent-;, ing deformities in children. John Hunter, following at the end. of the eighteenth century, contributed largely to ■t ;e surgery and pathology, of bone, and delivered bis- Croonian' lectures on muscular motion. In 1780 Jean Andre Yenel, of 1 Geneva, established the first orthopaedic institute at Orbe Canton 0 Vaud. Here Venel accomplished much-good work, and Wrote upon corroc'fcion of lateral curvature and rotation of the .spine. At the end of the eighteenth pen- ■ ury and beginning of the nineteenth, Gouen wrote an excellent account’of ngidar deformity due to caries,’'and 1 Percival Pott in England wrote upon 1 fli'e same disease, so that it became ( isown as Pott’s disease. That the , isease was prevalent early in' history 1

vas proved by the picture of ah Egyptian mummy which was shown 1 on the breen by the lecturer. Pott broke his

rnkle joint, and Hunter ruptured one of his own tendons, and this led them to- do researches in the course of which they did operations in the cutting and transplanting of tendons now so widely used ki the treatment of infantile paralysis. Tenotomy was practised on the Continent, hut wias not’ introduced into England until 1837; Then W. S. Little 'had talipas equino varus, following infantile paralysis in early phildhocd. He had consulted Sir Anthony Cooper and most of the' approved eurgioal authorities in London, ’but from none did he receive any prospect of cure, so he went to the Continent, had his tendon Achilles and was cured; Hr come ba-ek to r London, and performed the operation there m 1837. ! T, , Operative orthopaedics had to wait the introduction of anaesthesia in .1846 and afterward that of antiseptic’-.sur-' gery by Lister in 1867. Orthopaedic surgery was, a new departure. Little became- an apostle of this work -and.in 1840, was instruriiental in founding,s.an Orthopaedic Hospital in Bloomsbqry Square, London. In 1845 it was granted m. Royal Charter wherein it was named the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. Orthopaedic surgery was \a dev-el-opmet of the ‘2oth century, and [the Great Wa,r gave a great impetus to its, development. Dr Gillies went on to show by means of lantern elides the many and • varied appliances used in orthopaedic surgery, and to show some of the mar- ' vollous cures which had been effected' in children suffering from rickets, in- ( fantile paralvsis, club feet, and frac- . tmfes and dislocations. The modern aids to science included hydro-gym- , nasi urns and ultra violet rays. I l