Part 12
When attempts to reduce a dislocated shoulder have failed, if the
patient be still growing, the bone of the affected arm will not increase
like the sound one, for although it does increase in so far it becomes
shorter than the other; and those persons called
weasel-armed, become
so from two accidents, either from having met with this dislocation
in utero, or from another accident, which will be described afterward.
But those who while they were children have had deep-seated suppurations
about the head of the bone, all become weasel-armed; and this, it
should be well known, will be the issue, whether the abscess be opened
by an incision or cautery, or whether it break spontaneously. Those
who are thus affected from birth are quite able to use the arm yet
neither can they raise the arm to the ear, by extending the elbow,
but they do this much less efficiently than with the sound arm. But
in those who have had the shoulder dislocated after they were grown
up, and when it has not been reduced, the top of the shoulder becomes
much less fleshy, and the habit of body at that part is attenuated;
but when they cease to have pain, whatever they attempt to perform
by raising the elbow from the sides obliquely, they can no longer
accomplish as formerly; but whatever acts are performed by carrying
the arm around by the sides, either backward or forward, all those
they can perform; for they can work with an auger or a saw, or with
a hatchet, and can dig, by not raising the elbow too much, and do
all other kinds of work which are done in similar attitudes.
