Dislocations and how to treat them; Instruments of Reduction, Hippocrates

 Why you might read Instruments of Reduction?

Instruments of reduction is a complete work about dislocations of the joints and spine. Hippocrates also explains how the person will be lamed by the injury. Because of this it also gives us great insight into the risks of getting hurt in Greek times.

In my Self Education project, the Hippocratic corpus is of great import. It is the first real medicine books and gives a great foundation for medicine and the life sciences in books to come.

Content of Instruments of Reduction

First Hippocrates spends some time describing the skeletal system in depth. This includes which way the bones curve in the body. As well as a systematic description of what connects to what.

For the rest of the book, he works his way around the body. For each joint, he describes how it can be dislocated and how to return it to its position. He also details how it will heal and how lame it will be afterwards. He details this both for if it is relocated or reduced and if it is left untreated. In a couple of places, he describes how death will likely follow the injury. He does cover a little about what to do with treatment after reduction like restricting food and bandaging. He generally says no splints the exception being the fingers. This is a small part of the text as he is mainly focused on the dislocations themselves.

Reflections on Instruments of Reduction

The number of different ways you can dislocate a lot of your joints was surprising. Most can be dislocated in at least two different ways with some being able to be dislocated in up to four ways. This is of course on two planes of movement. When there is only two it is on the same plane. so backwards and forwards or inwards and outwards.

Again Hippocrates includes the use of mechanical devices to help reduce the joint. These need more understanding of his terms than I managed on a read through. He talks about using axels but not how they are used. His contraptions are generally based on these axels.

I found this book hard to read as I kept imagining the dislocations and reductions. The text itself isn't difficult, it made me squeamish.

What others have to say about Instruments of Reduction

The internet is quite again about this book. There are many places to find the text of it online but no-one has written much about it.

Comparisons with other texts

This book reminds me a lot of Fractures. That being said they are the reverse of each other. Fractures is about fractures with a slight deviation into dislocations. Whereas this text is dislocations with a slight deviation into fractures where relevant. As such while they cover some of the same material they complement each other.

Like Injuries of the Head, this is a practical work. They both start with a discussion of the relevant anatomy. They then continue on to specifics of injuries and how to treat them.

Conclusion

Instruments of Reductions is a text about relocating dislocated joints. It covers this in a systematic and complete way even detailing when death is likely to occur. It has a lot in common with Hippocrates other injury based books and complements them nicely.

Have you read Instruments of Reduction? If so what did you think of it? 

 
Want to read Instruments of Reduction but haven't? Please leave me a comment and let me know why you want to read it.

Hopefully, this post inspires you to take the time to look into it on your own journey of Self Education.

Get a copy of Instruments of Reduction.