[Amputation and equipment of the lower limb during the Revolution and the Empire].

Abstract

During the French Revolution and Napoleon's campaigns, above-knee or below-knee amputations were performed either immediately or with a delay, which favoured septic problems. A rapidly operated amputation by a well-trained surgeon was the best way to save the life of a soldier who suffered from an open comminuted fracture of a limb. The conditions on military campaigns were indeed hard ones: doctors and surgeons had practically no resources and the transportation of severely injured persons was difficult. Such conditions favoured the pain and the danger caused by an injury, and it was rather impossible for the medical corps to lavish repeated treatments on the wounds. The amputated soldiers were then given prostheses: either a traditional peg-leg, with a flexed knee joint for trans-tibial amputations, or an "imitative" prosthesis, which tended to look like a real leg with eventually an articulated knee or foot. The author mentions famous or unrecognized amputated men, describing significant events.