Question

How to diagnose and bind a broken limb​

Answer 1

Mention of the Middle Ages often conjures up a picture of dark and crowded places, inhabited by limping, smelly people covered in ulcers for which there was no cure and where a simple infection usually re-sulted in a miserable death. Application of herbal salves or squashed frogs for infected wounds worsened the inflammation sooner than healed it. 1  Earlier studies of medieval health care have consequently concluded that ‘medieval people lived in a medically dangerous and helpless world’. 2  Is such a conclusion wholly justified? Medically dangerous their world surely was, but perhaps they were not com- pletely helpless, at least not in the case of fractures. Anglo-Saxons had  plenty of opportunities to acquire some skill and achieve a moderate success in fracture treatment, which is what this paper seeks to demonstrate. The greater part of the population in Anglo-Saxon England spent their working lives tilling the soil and tending livestock. Nowadays, agriculture ranks among the top three most dangerous occupations in industrialized countries. 3  The advent of industrialization has certainly increased the hazards of farm life, but today non-mechanized causes of injury still contribute to approximately forty per cent of all farm-related injuries, consisting of, amongst other mishaps, falls from lofts and ladders, bovine assaults, or accidents with horses on the road. 4  These causes of injury are unlikely to have differed significantly in