RESECTION or EXCISION OF JorNTs is an operation in which the diseased bone of a joint is cut out, in place of cutting off the whole limb. Dr. Druitt, in his able summary on this subject in The Surgeon's Va.de-Mecum, remarks, that " it seems to be established that excision is on the whole safer than amputation; less violence is done to the body, fewer great arteries and nerves are injured, and, what is of more consequence, fewer large veins are divided, and as the articular end of the bone only is sawn off, and the medullary canal not touched, there is less chance of pytemia. Lastly, the patient is left with an imperfect limb, it is true, but with one which, in most cases, is highly use ful." The operation has been performed on the ankle-joint, the elbow, hip-joint, knee, and shoulder. Few subjects have in recent times excited more discussion among sur geons than the application of this operation to the knee-joint. The operation was first performed in 1762; and up to the year 1830, there are records of 19 cases out of which 11 died. Form 1830 to 1850, the operation was never performed, and was generally con demned; but in the last-named year, it was revived by prof. Fergtisson, and is now a frequent and regularly recognized operation. "The cases," says Dr. Druitt, "in which
it ought to be performed, are, generally speaking, such caws of injury or disease as would otherwise be submitted to amputation. The object of the operation is to produce a firm and useful limb, slightly shortened, and with entire bony ',Moil or fibrous union, admitting of some small degree of motion at the situation of the joint. But all cases arc not suitable for excision; and those cases are unsuitable and better adapted for amputa tion in which either the quantity of the diseased bone is very great (for then the case will probably not do well, or, if it proceed to recovery, and the patient be young, the future growth of the limb will be prevented), or the quality of the disease may be such as expe rience has shown to be incompatible with the exudation of healthy material of repair." In at least 50 per cent, the operation results in a good useful leg. It bas'already saved so many limbs that it must be regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of modern sur gery.—Further information on this subject may be found in prof. Fergusson's Lectures on Conservative Surgery, delivered in 1864, at the royal college of surgeons, and reports in The Lancet.