eli5 why were pre-anesthesia amputations not done with quillotine like devices to make it as fast as possible?
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Because that would do more damage than good. It’s not like cartoons where you end up with a clean slice through from top to bottom, you have to stitch it shut properly or the amputee will bleed to death and the risk of infection is significantly higher.
A proper amputation leaves the flesh looking more like an alligators jaw so they can close it up around the severed bone and sew it shut.
Amputation requires precise work…
1) bleeding …
2). infection
3) precision
You don’t worry about those when you are doing french revolution
Sometimes they were. Sometimes they still are, in a sense.
The problem is that there is no flesh left for wound closure at that point. A proper amputation must leave extra skin, essentially peeling it back, THEN cutting away the damaged tissue, then sewing the extra skin left over shut to close the wound cleanly. That extra skin is not there with a guillotine cut as the flesh is cut on the same level as the tissues beneath
Who says they weren’t?! Often done with a sword. Then cauterized.
“He was a great believer in early and fast amputation to save patient’s lives and in the Battle of Borodino he reportedly performed 200 amputations in 24 hours.”
[Dominique Jean Larrey – Surgeon in Chief of Napoleon’s Armies](https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/dominique-jean-larrey-surgeon-in-chief-of-napoleons-armies/)
If the whole limb were chopped off in one fell swoop, there would not have been enough skin and other soft tissue to sew together in order to close the wound. Cutting slowly and deliberately gives the surgeon better control over the remaining tissue and, therefore, the outcome.
Had the patient survived anyway, this approach would have made it very difficult for a prosthetic limb to be attached, because very little tissue would have been attached over the end of the bone providing cushioning. The pressure of a prosthetic on just bone is excruciating.
(Also, you mean guillotine, with a G.)
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