Was just reading on pre 20th century amputations and how they strived to be as fast as possible, cutting through bone and all.
Why didn’t they just amputate at the joint, like a butcher cuts pork or beef? That would have been way faster than sawing off though bone.
In: 8
Way back they would because cutting the bone would increase the chance of infection by a lot. But once prosthetics became viable, keeping major joints intact. In the case of an emergency where, for some reason, a layperson had to amputate a rotting limb, you’re better off cutting at the joint butcher style.
To address the speed question, there was a theory that the faster a surgery was, the better chance of survival and lower chance of infection. We really didn’t know a lot about infection back then. Often, the doctor was also the undertaker and didn’t always wash his hands between embalming and surgeries and childbirth.
There’s a [story of one doctor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston) that tried to amputate so fast but he not only amputated the patient’s limb, but amputated an assistant’s fingers on the follow-through. And someone else watching fainted when the knife cut through his coattails and died, as did the other two from infection, so with one surgery there were 3 casualties.
Simply, cutting bone breaks bone, opens it for infections.
Cutting flesh away and then sawing through joints was way safer, and encouraged survivability.
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