Note 78 — K (Continued) (continued 3)

The potters are considered to be adepts in the treatment of cases of fracture. And it is still narrated how one of them successfully set in splints the broken arm of Lord Elphinstone, when Governor of Madras, after the English doctors had given up the job as hopeless.78 “In our village,” it is recorded,79 “cases of dislocations of bones and fractures, whether simple, compound, comminuted or complicated, are taken in hand by the bone-setters, who are no other than our potters. The village barber and the village potter are our surgeons. While the barber treats cases of boils, wounds, and tumours, the potter confines himself to cases of fracture and dislocations of bones.” The amateur treatment by the unqualified potter sometimes gives rise to what is known as potter’s gangrene.