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Articles and Products of History
Amputation: 18th Century
Surgery
Everyone has seen the movies depicting military hospitals, or a surgeons
office in the 18th century. These attempts at reproducing the facts of
surgery as it was performed in the 1700's is usually an accurate representation.
You see the surgeon with a smock or apron that is covered with blood.
You will also see the surgeon and hospital attendants going from one patient
to the next without washing and sterilizing their instruments or hands.
Is it any wonder that most wounded and ill later developed an infection?
Sometimes they ended up in worse shape after the surgery than before.
Surgeons were working under very poor conditions, and the lack of medical
knowledge in the 1700's played an important key in the poor quality of
surgery. Most hospitals had no fresh air circulation, and the facilities
were bordering on filthily.
During war the most performed surgery was amputation. The horrors of
this procedure will bring goose bumps to the most stoic individual. It
was believed that by amputating an arm or a leg immediately after the
injury, that the patient would still be in shock and that would cause
less pain to the individual. The two main instruments used for amputating
was a large saw used for cutting through a thick leg bone, and a smaller
saw that was used for arm bones. The injured limb had a binding, usually
leather, tied about 4 inches above the area where the amputation would
occur. A knife was used to cut the flesh down to the bone. Arteries were
tied off. Next came the sawing of the bone itself. Once the injured area
was removed, bandages were placed on the end of the limb and a covering
was placed over it to prevent it from getting dirty.
We should be very grateful with modern medicine and how far it has come.
We may fear a shot, but that is nothing compared to the tortures that
were done on patients in the 18th century.
Further Reading
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