Amputation below the knee in ancient times
Amputation below the knee in the men’s operating theater at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, late eighteenth/early nineteenth century (artist unknown). A Petit’s screw tourniquet is in use, and the patient is held on a firm table in a semi-seated position by assistants, perhaps to promote fainting more readily. The surgeon adopts a tour de maître approach, reaching underneath the leg and holding the point toward himself before sweeping the concave blade from the outer to the upper, inner, and finally lower surface, performing a rapid circular amputation. Note two knives, a saw, a bonecutter forceps, a bowl of dressings, and a bowl on the floor to catch blood; no heated cauteries are seen. If ligatures were applied, these would possibly be in the dressing bowl.