Indian OT: "So the boy doesn't use his left hand at all?" Me: "No, he has low muscle tone in the whole arm following an epileptic seizure" Indian OT: "Well, why don't we just strap his right arm to his body then, force him to use his left hand?" Me: "Umm, well we usually just play games that stimulate use of both hands…." Indian OT: "Well I suppose I can make the boy a splint.
One experience that stands out was taking a child to the occupational therapy department of a large teaching hospital, to get a hand splint made.
One example is Hugh Owen Thomas, a Liverpool-based doctor who devised the splint, "one of the simplest and most effective surgical appliances ever invented".
They include bright coal, which contains more than 80 percent vitrinite, and splint coal, which contains more than 30 percent opaque matter.
Their forelimbs are very short, and the third finger is reduced to a splint or lost entirely.
In the equids the proximal end remains as a small splint of bone, while the distal end has fused with the tibia.
The lower leg of the horse, for example, includes only one strengthened metacarpal; the two splint bones behind and above the hoof are reduced metacarpals, and the remaining two original metacarpals have been lost.
All troops are trained in the basics of first aid, including how to stop bleeding, splint fractures, dress wounds and burns, and administer pain medication.
Significant advances at this time were the new operation of tenotomy (the cutting of tendons, which made correcting deformities easier), the surgical correction of clubfoot, the invention of the Thomas splint (which provided better support for fractures of long bones in the limbs), and the introduction of quick-setting plaster of Paris for use in orthopedic bandages.
His leg was in quite a bad way and we managed to – somebody got hold of some Sellotape, we used Sellotape and some bits of wood we found in the road to make a splint and we Sellotaped his leg together".
Racing Victoria later reported that Ed Dunlop's globetrotter was "comfortable with his leg in a splint" and confirmed that the injury, though serious, was not life-threatening.
