46. I will not dwell on the question, so much agitated of late, namely,
whether or not the olecranon be susceptible of consolidation or
reunion. Already has it been hundreds of times answered by experience.
What could theory add to the conviction already impressed on us from
that quarter? It was by exhibiting to the crowd of pupils who attended
his clinical lectures, fractures of this kind perfectly reunited, that
Desault refuted the weak arguments, of the periosteum not being able,
in consequence of not covering the anterior surface of the olecranon,
to produce a union between its fragments, of the synovia mixing with
the matter of callus, diluting it, weakening it, preventing it from
becoming sufficiently hard for the purpose of reunion, &c. We will
only observe, that these ideas are borrowed from a theory which modern
experiments have proven to be unfounded, and which, were it true, would
be applied in the present case quite unphilosophically, since it would
deny to certain parts of man the power or property of restoration or
being healed, a property common to all the component parts of beings
endowed with life, and which even constitutes one of their essential
and discriminative characters.
47. Is the consolidation of the olecranon effected in the same mode
as in other bones? The observations of many practitioners, Camper in
particular, seem to prove that a ligamento-cartilaginous substance is
always the medium of the union of fragments. Desault once found this
substance in a corpse, but it was in a case where the fracture had been
improperly treated, and where, of course, no inference could be drawn
with regard to ordinary cases.
48. But of what import to us are the means which nature employs?
The indication is still the same. The fragments must be always kept
in contact, that the reunion may be immediate, and that, as David
observes, in his memoir on motion and rest in surgical diseases, the
apophysis may not, by becoming too long in consequence of the space
occupied by the callus, impede the extension of the forearm on the os
humeri.
§ XVI.