Part 15
You must be upon your guard lest the bone sustain any injury from
the fleshy parts if not properly treated. When the bone has been sawed
and otherwise denuded, whether it be actually sound, or only appears
to be so, but has sustained some injury from the blow, there may be
danger of its suppurating (although it would not otherwise have done
so), if the flesh which surrounds the bone be ill cured, and become
inflamed and strangled; for it gets into a febrile state, and becomes
much inflamed. For the bone acquires heat and inflammation from the
surrounding flesh, along with irritation and throbbing, and the other
mischiefs which are in the flesh itself, and from these it gets into
a state of suppuration. It is a bad thing for the flesh (
granulations?）
in an ulcer to be moist and mouldy, and to require a long time to
become clean. But the wound should be made to suppurate as quickly
as possible; for, thus the parts surrounding the wound would be the
least disposed to inflammation, and would become the soonest clean;
for the flesh which has been chopped and bruised by the blow, must
necessarily suppurate and slough away. But when cleaned the wound
must
[p. 156]be dried, for thus the wound will most speedily become whole,
when flesh devoid of humors grows up, and thus there will be no fungous
flesh in the sore. The same thing applies to the membrane which surrounds
the brain: for when, by sawing the bone, and removing it from the
meninx, you lay the latter bare, you must make it clean and dry as
quickly as possible, lest being in a moist state for a considerable
time, it become soaked therewith and swelled; for when these things
occur, there is danger of its mortifying.
