page_title: Richard Partridge
section_title: Consultation on Giuseppe Garibaldi
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Partridge / Consultation on Giuseppe Garibaldi
caption_attribution_description: Auguste Nélaton (1807 – 1873). Cropped and despeckled. Lupo 10:07, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
context_page_description: Richard Partridge FRS, FRCS was a British surgeon. Although he became President of both the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, he is best known for his part in apprehending the London Burkers gang and for failing to spot a bullet lodged in Giuseppe Garibaldi's leg.
  He was the tenth child and youngest son of twelve children of Samuel Partridge, a Glaswegian merchant who moved to Ross-on-Wye in his retirement. His eldest brother was the portrait painter, John Partridge.
context_section_description: In September 1862, Partridge was selected to travel to Italy to attend Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had been shot just above the right ankle during his march on Rome that summer. Before the invention of X-rays, detection of the bullet was highly problematic, and the surgeons treating Garibaldi disagreed over whether the ball had lodged in his ankle. When, after two weeks, the condition of the ankle had worsened, some began to favour amputation, and fears for the popular Italian patriot grew in England. A public subscription raised over a thousand guineas to send a British surgeon to Italy to provide a second opinion on the bullet wound.
  The reason for choosing Partridge for this role is unclear. Although he was, by then, one of the more eminent British surgeons, he never achieved the fame of his colleague, Sir William Fergusson. The Royal College of Surgeons' biography characterises him as 'a painstaking but not a brilliant surgeon; minute in detail and hesitating in execution'. More importantly, he had no experience with gunshot injuries. The contemporary medical press attacked the mission for its serious breach in medical etiquette in presuming to consult on a patient without having been invited to do so by the attending medical practitioners. It amounted to patient stealing, and was an affront to the dignity of the profession (newly self-regulating since the creation of the General Medical Council in 1858). The Lancet was also scathing about the 'new manifestation of the proverbial insular pride which is ever insisting upon the immense superiority of everything British'.
  Despite all the mission's detractors, Partridge seems to have been received warmly by the surgeons attending Garibaldi on his arrival in Varignano on 16 September 1862. After examining the patient, he concluded, based largely on the unswollen nature of ankle, that 'the bullet did not enter the joint nor effect a lodgement elsewhere', and that Garibaldi would recover with rest and nursing care.
  Unfortunately, this optimistic prediction was not fulfilled; by the end of October, the development of sepsis made amputation appear inevitable. The French surgeon Auguste Nélaton, known for innovations in surgical tools, was asked to examine Garibaldi. An electrical probe designed by Favre had been used previously, without success, in an attempt to determine if the bullet remained. Nélaton used a normal surgical probe to examine the wound, concluding that Partridge had been mistaken and the bullet was indeed lodged in the joint; he recommended extraction using ball forceps. He later designed a special probe with a tip of unglazed porcelain, which could be introduced into the wound and retain an impression of any bullet present. Using this improved probe, the Italian surgeon Zanetti became convinced of the bullet's presence, and successfully extracted it on 23 November, saving Garibaldi's limb. The triumph of an innovative surgical instrument in this case was just one example of a trend over the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth towards the acceptance of surgery as a craft, with instruments as essential tools of that craft.
  Although Partridge had re-examined the wound shortly after Nélaton's consultation and changed his mind to concur with his French rival, severe damage to the relations between the British and Continental schools of surgery was inevitable. His mistake also substantially harmed his professional reputation.
caption: Auguste Nélaton, whose porcelain-tipped probe was key to saving Garibaldi's leg
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