Main description:

This book opens with a unique historical review of natural amputations due to congenital absence, disease, frostbite, animal trauma, and to punishment and ritual. The advent of surgical amputation and its difficulties form a major part of the book, summarising the evolution of the control of haemorrhage and infection, pain relief, techniques, instrumentation, complications, prostheses, results and case histories. Alternative procedures, increasingly important in the last two centuries, are also debated.

Contents:

and Sources.- Natural Causes of Dismemberment.- Accidental Causes for Amputation: Auto-Amputation.- Ritual, Punitive, Legal and Iatrogenic Causes.- Cold Steel and Gunshot Causes.- Elective Amputation: Early Evolution to the End of the 17th Century.- Elective Amputation: From the 18th Century to 1846.- Elective Amputation: From 1846 to Recent Times.- Interpretations of Amputation by Society, Patients and Surgeons.- Surgical Instrumentation and Equipment.- Indications, Timing and Procedures.- Stumps: Reattachment,Management, Complications, Revision and Care for Limb-Fitting.- Artificial Limbs and Rehabilitation.