[p. 251]position
one can most quickly turn the sound limb under the body, by walking
with the unsound limb outward, and the sound inward. In the case we
are now treating of, it is well that the body finds out the attitudes
which are the easiest for itself. Those persons, then, who have not
attained their growth at the time when they met with a dislocation
which is not reduced, become maimed in the thigh, the leg, and the
foot, for neither do the bones grow properly, but become shortened,
and especially the bone of the thigh; and the whole limb is emaciated,
loses its muscularity, and becomes enervated and thinner, both from
the impediment at the joint, and because the patient cannot use the
limb, as it does not lie in its natural position, for a certain amount
of exercise will relieve excessive enervation, and it will remedy
in so far the deficiency of growth in length. Those persons, then,
are most maimed who have experienced the dislocation in utero, next
those who have met with it in infancy, and least of all, those who
are full grown. The mode of walking adopted by adults has been already
described; but those who are children when this accident befalls them,
generally lose the erect position of the body, and crawl about miserably
on the sound leg, supporting themselves with the hand of the sound
side resting on the ground. Some, also, who had attained manhood before
they met with this accident, have also lost the faculty of walking
erect. Those who were children when they met with the accident, and
have been properly instructed, stand erect upon the sound leg, but
carry about a staff, which they apply under the armpit of the sound
side, and some use a staff in both arms; the unsound limb they bear
up, and the smaller the unsound limb, the greater facility have they
in walking, and their sound leg is no less strong than when both are
sound. The fleshy parts of the limb are enervated in all such cases,
but those who have dislocation inward are more subject to this loss
of strength than, for the most part, those who have it outward.
Part 53
Some tell a story how the Amazonian women dislocate the joints of
their male children while mere infants, some at the knee, and others
at the hip-joint, that they may be maimed, and that the male sex may
not conspire against the female, and that
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