SPLINT is a piece of wood or other rigid substance which is used in surgery to maintain any part of the body in a fixed position, and especially for the purpose of holding steadily together the portions of a fractured bone. Splints vary almost infinitely in form and size, according to the part to which they have to be adapted, and the position in which it is to be held ; the number and the arrangement of them in each case are equally subject to variation ; nor can a surgeon have a better rule than that of following no general plan, but of deter mining in each case the apparatus best fitted for its peculiar exigencies. [Fnavrune.] The material of which they are commonly made is light wood; each splint consisting either of one piece cut nearly to the form f anti size of the limb, or of several pasted together with a strap of linen so as to be flexible in one direction. Iv some cases tin is a preferable material ; in some stiff pasteboard. In many cases also it is very advantageous to adapt the splints exactly to all the irregularities of the limb ; and as this cannot be done with wood or any unyielding material, it is usual to employ one which, being applied moist and soft, gradually hardens. Stiff pasteboard will sometimes be sufficient, especially for children ; but a better inaterird for general use in sole leather or gutta percha, applied while quite pliant after having been well soaked in hot water, and then bandaged closely to the limb and allowed to dry. Another plan of this kind now much employed is to
form a splint of linen and some glutinous material, such as starch, or a mixture of white of egg and flour, or of mucilage of gum-arabic and whiting, made as thick as birdlime. In using these, the limb or other part should be thinly padded with soft lint ; then strips of coarse linen soaked in the tenacious material should be laid on, one over the other, till on each side of the limb they form a layer about as thick as a common wooden splint. The whole should then be surrounded with a neatly-applied bandage soaked in starch. When dry, splints of this kind will so exactly fit the part to which they are applied; and be so rigid, that a patient may with safety execute the slighter natural movements of a limb within a fortnight after it has been fractured. All the further care of a simple case of fracture will generally consist in the occasional replacement of the starched bandage, and the adaptation of the splints, by cutting their edges, to the change of form which the limb may undergo as the swelling diminishes. Splints of this kind however must not be applied till all the inflam mation immediately consequent on the fracture has ceased. See Druitt's ' Surgeon's Vade-mecum.'