[p. 201]
if you hope to succeed; but otherwise you need not take and give trouble
in vain.
Part 32
When you have reduced the bones to their place, the modes of treatment,
whether you expect the bones to exfoliate or not, have been already
described. All those cases in which an exfoliation of bone is expected,
should be treated by the method of bandaging with cloths, beginning
for the most part at the middle of the bandage, as is done with the
double-headed bandage; but particular attention should be paid to
the shape of the wound, so that its lips may gape or be distorted
as little as possible under the bandage. Sometimes the turns of the
bandage have to be made to the right, and sometimes to the left, and
sometimes a double-headed bandage is to be used.
Part 33
It should be known that bones, which it has been found impossible
to reduce, as well as those which are wholly denuded of flesh, will
become detached. In some cases the upper part of the bone is laid
bare, and in others the flesh dies all around; and, from a sore of
long standing, certain of the bones become carious, and some not,
some more, and some less; and in some the small, and in others the
large bones. From what has been said it will be seen, that it is impossible
to tell in one word when the bones will separate. Some come away more
quickly, owing to their smallness, and some from being merely fixed
at the point; and some, from pieces not separating, but merely exfoliating,
become dried up and putrid; and besides, different modes of treatment
have different effects. For the most part, the bones separate most
quickly in those cases in which suppuration takes place most quickly,
and when new flesh is most quickly formed, and is particularly sound,
for the flesh which grows up below in the wound generally elevates
the pieces of bone. It will be well if the whole circle of the bone
separate in forty days; for in some cases it is protracted to sixty
days, and in some to more; for the more porous pieces of bone separate
more quickly, but the more solid come away more slowly; but the other
smaller splinters in much less time, and others otherwise. A portion
of bone which protrudes should be sawn off for the following reasons:
if it cannot be reduced, and if it appears
