Note 80 — K (Continued) (continued 3)

Concerning potter’s gangrene, Captain W. J. Niblock, I.M.S., writes as follows.80 “Cases of gangrene, the result of treatment of fractures by the village potters, used to be frequently met with in the General Hospital, Madras. These were usually brought when the only possible treatment consisted in amputation well above the disease. Two of these cases are indelibly impressed on my mind. Both were cases of gangrene of the leg, the result of tight splinting by potters. The first patient was a boy of thirteen. Whilst a student was removing the dressings on his admission, the foot came off in his hands, leaving two inches of the lower ends of the tibia and fibula exposed, and absolutely devoid of all the soft tissues, not even the periosteum being left. The second case was that of a Hindu man, aged 46. He was taken to the operation theatre at once. Whilst engaged in disinfecting my hands, I heard a dull thud on the floor of the operation theatre, turned round, and found that the gangrenous leg, as the result of a struggle whilst chloroform was being administered, had become separated at the knee-joint, and had fallen on floor; or, to put it tersely, the man had kicked his leg off.”