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Ira M. Rutkow, MD,MPH,DrPH

Arch Surg. 2001;136:711.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

ONE OF EARLY America's most amazing surgical spectaculars was a shoulder amputation reported by William C. Bowen (1785-1815) of Providence, RI, in the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery (October 1814). The facts, according to the author's report, were quite simple. In January and again in April 1813, Bowen was consulted by Peter Carpenter, a farmer residing in Rehoboth, Mass, for a disabling and rapidly progressing enlargement of his right arm. Convinced that the disease was a fungus haematodes (an obsolete term denoting a soft, fungating, easily bleeding malignant tumor), Bowen, in consultation with his uncle Pardon Bowen (1757-1826), a respected physician from Providence, recommended amputation at the shoulder joint.

The engraving from Bowen's article on "articulation of the shoulder." Figure 1 "represents the arm as it lay upon the table after the amputation." Figure 2 "represents the diseased part of the arm split open . . . [Full Text of this Article]