A-INTRODUCTION
3
were described by Oribasius (324-400) and Paulus of Aegina (625-690), and Figs, i and
2 are illustrations of the technique employed, as published in
Chirurgia, e Graeco in
Latinum connersa
(Paris 1544), by Vidus Vidius. The victim, lying on a bench in prone
position, was pulled extended from the shoulder upwards and distally from the hips,
while the medical attendant either stood or sat on the gibbus, or a cross-bar was pressed
onto the gibbus until it disappeared. Avicenna (980-1037), while following Paulus of
Aegina's treatment for dislocation of the thoraco-lumbar spine, reduced the cervical
spine by extension in supine position followed by fixation of the neck through splints.
It was Roland of Parma, professor at Salerno, who, in his
Chirurgia
(1210), discarded the
use of Hippocrates' bench and used manual extension only. For dislocation of the thoraco-
FIG. 3. Calot's method of manual reduction
lumbar spine, the patient was placed in supine position and the medical attendant pulled
on his legs, while an assistant held the upper part of the body. For the reduction of the
cervical spine, the patient was placed in sitting position, the physician braced his feet
on the patient's shoulders and pulled his head briskly with a folded cloth passed under–
neath his chin. However, the famous French surgeon, Ambroise Pare, in his
Dix-Livres
de Chirurgie
(1564), reverted to Hippocrates' extension method in prone position but
used it with greater caution by reducing the fracture of dislocation by manual pressure
and immobilizing the vertebral column after reduction by splints or specially designed
lead plates. The patient was then turned on his back and kept in that position for a long
time. This extension technique in prone position with manual reduction of the vertebral
fracture or dislocation was still used in the nineteenth century by Jean Francis Calot,
manipulating the spinal deformity with his fists (Fig. 3). I myself witnessed this method
