It is now a well-known fact that Guy de Chauliac was in the habit of treating fractures of the thigh by the employment of the weight and pulley as means of keeping up a continuing extension of the damaged limb. As his description of the method in question is very brief, it may not seem out of place to reproduce it here. Translated into English it reads as follows:—
As to the plan which I employ, it is this: After making fast to
the fractured thigh splints which extend down as far as the feet,
I reinforce the support which they give, either by placing the limb
in a box or by applying to its sides bundles of straw (appuyements).
[These are shown in the left-hand lower corner of Fig.
12.] I then attach to the foot a mass of lead as a weight, taking
care to pass the cord which supports the lead over a small pulley
in such a manner that it shall pull upon the leg in a longitudinal
direction. And if it then be found that there is not complete
equality between the fractured limb and its fellow as regards
length, the discrepancy may be corrected by gently pulling upon
the former. Every nine days the limb should be cautiously
handled; and at the end of about fifty days it will be found that
firm union has taken place.
One more remark seems to be called for in reference to the
fact that Guy de Chauliac, although he was avowedly a
surgeon, managed to win as great a reputation and as high
a social position as was possessed by any physician of that
period. The medical practitioner, it will be remembered,
held himself, during the Middle Ages, and was universally
held, to be a much higher type of man than the surgeon.
The relative standing of the two is well shown in the
accompanying sketch (Fig. 13), in which all the details
(attitude, head gear, gown, etc.) have evidently been carefully
studied by the artist. Guy, however, through the
sheer force of his character, and also probably because he
was known to have won the highest medical honor (the
grade of "Master of Medicine") which it was in the power
of the university to confer, pushed his way to the top, and
held, for a period of twenty years, the position of private
physician to three Popes in succession—Clement VI.,
Innocent VI. and Urban V. In other words, the prevailing
