CASE 
OF 
FRACTURE OF THE RECK OF THE SCAPULA. 
By 
JOHN ASHIIURST, Jr., M.D., 
SURGEON TO TIIE EPISCOPAL HOSPITAL AND TO THE CHILDREN’S 
HOSPITAL; CONSULTING SURGEON TO TnE HOSPITAL 
OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, RADNOR. 
[Read November 4, 1874.] 
This rare accident occurred in a boy five years old, 
who had been struck by a falling door, receiving a 
contused wound just in front of the right ear and an 
injury of the right shoulder, the precise nature of 
which does not seem to have been at first recognized. 
When I saw the case, on the third day, there was a 
good deal of pain and tenderness with moderate swell- 
ing, but very little deformity. Careful examination 
showed that there was no fracture of either the hume- 
rus or the clavicle, nor of either the acromion or the 
coracoid process; but the latter appeared to move 
with the head of the humerus, and, by grasping the 
neck of the scapula between the lingers laid upon the 
shoulder and the thumb thrust firmly into the axilla, 
deep-seated crepitus was elicited upon the arm being 
forcibly rotated. The treatment consisted in main- 
taining the arm in the “Velpeau position” by means 
of broad adhesive strips and a bandage, and a satis- 
factory cure was effected in the course of four weeks. 
Though the diagnosis in this case lacks, of course, 70 
ASIIIIURST, FRACTURE OF THE SCAPULA. 
the confirmation of dissection, the symptoms are, I 
think, sufficiently characteristic to warrant its being 
added to the examples of fracture of the neck of the 
scapula, or, which, perhaps, would he a better name, 
fracture through the supra-scapular notch, recorded 
by Cooper and other writers.