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[p. 581] another from the knee; if stronger, the assistants will have more purchase if they have knotted the straps around long poles; and if after pressing the lower ends of the poles against firm supports, they have drawn the upper ends towards themselves with both hands. Even more forcible pressure can be exerted by stretching the limb over a bench, at either end of which is a windlass to which the straps are attached; when these are rotated as in a winepress, it is possible, by continuing to do this, even to rupture the ligaments and muscles, and not merely to stretch them. Now the patient is to be laid upon this bench, on his face or back or side, so that that part is always the higher into which the bone has slipped, and that from which it has receded the lower. When the sinews have been stretched, if the bone comes forwards, some round object is placed over the groin and the patient's knee must be pulled back over it with a jerk, in the same way and for the same reason for which this was done in the case of the forearm; as soon as the thigh can be bent up, the bone is in place. In the other cases, when the bones under extension have receded a little from each other, the surgeon should force the projecting part back, whilst an assistant presses the hip in the opposite direction. When the bone is replaced nothing further need be done, but the patient must be kept in bed for a rather long time or the thigh may become displaced again on moving while the sinews are still relaxed.
21 It is very well known that the knee is put out externally and internally and backwards. Many have written that it does not slip out forwards; and this may be very near the truth, for the knee-cap
De Medicina. Celsus. W. G. Spencer. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press. 1971 (Republication of the 1935 edition).
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