Note 32 — A DISSERTATION ON THE Inutility of Amputation.

See the memoirs of the Academy of Surgery, t. 2. p. 256. where Mr. Boucher, in speaking of gunshot wounds, with the bone shattered near the articulation, shews that amputation commonly proves fatal, and that of three patients on whom it is performed, generally two die; whereas out of an hundred and sixty-five who had had the bones shattered, on whom amputation had not been performed, not one died. A degree of success which he ascribes, it must be owned, to the management of the surgeon; who, instead of spirituous applications, only made use of emollients, light digestives and anodynes.