Broken Fibula - Again!

[Houmes]

(08-13-2012 05:33 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  This is a real stretch, but it came to mind after I read Jonathan's post. Did Booth have a back problem at an early age? Well, he was shot, apparently accidentally, by Matthew Canning in his hotel room in 1860. The exact location of the wound seems somewhat unclear, but it apparently was in the thigh or buttock region. I immediately thought of the sciatic nerve. Personally I have leg pain due to a back problem (sciatica). Maybe Dr. Houmes will read this and comment; I am asking if an injury to or near the sciatic nerve could cause chronic referred pain upwards into the lower back.

In all honesty, just the thought of jumping 11 or 12 feet increases my back pain, let alone actually doing it.

The sciatic nerve runs deep in the posterior buttock, and any lesion of note (like a gunshot wound to the rear) would be expected to cause permanent paralysis below the knee or loss of sensation on the outside of the leg and both sides of the feet. The sciaic nerve can be contused, meaning compressed or bruised, which can cause temporary problems--like hitting your funny bone, or in over the road truck drivers and long distance male sales personnel, where they have similar discomfort from a fat wallet in the back pocket on the affected side, pressing on the muscles and nerves for hours. Most true sciatica results from wear and tear on the disks of the back or from arthritis of the spine, closing the foramina passage of the nerve from the spinal cord to the leg, compressing the nerve over time without relief.

I appreciate the experiences listed above about personal back injuries, but my concern was comparing a stress fracture to a true, debilitating long bone fracture. I have never heard of Booth having other back problems, and apparently neither had Art Loux in his excellent article "The Accident-Prone Johne Wilkes Booth," Lincoln Herald, 1983:85(4). Dr. Mudd's mention of the back pain was interesting, but like many of his other statements either inadvertently misstating the truth (he called the fibula a tibia), misleading, or deliberate prevarication.

Incidentally, I plead nolo contendere for the grammar error in my first response, ending "...or had a horse fell on him." I should have used the past participle rather than the simple past form. My apologies to the teachers in the forum.