Note (24) — BOOK VIII.

24. Is less firmly held after it is reduced.) In a luxation of the humerus from a lax habit Hippocrates advises the use of the actual cautery, but with great caution, for fear of injuring the blood vessels or tendons; and when the ulcers are clean and fit for cicatrizing, to bind the arm close down to the side, and allow no motion, that the cicatrix may contract the part the more, and strengthen the joint. He censures the practice of his predecessors, who cauterized on the external and anterior side, which ever way the bone had been luxated, and observes that when the humerus is liable to slip into the arm-pit, this would rather push it downward, than prevent its luxation. He proposed therefore the new method of applying the cautery to that part, toward which the bone is liable to be protruded. Hippocrat. de Articul. p. 787, 788, and 789.