osteoclasy

English

Etymology

Ancient Greek ὀστέον (ostéon, “bone”) + Ancient Greek κλάσις (klásis, “breaking”)

Noun

osteoclasy (plural osteoclasies)

1. (medicine) The surgical fracture and resetting of a bone.
   • 1884, Gaillard's Medical Journal - Volume 38, page 434:

     He had performed upwards of twenty osteotomies, and nearly as many osteoclasies.

   • 1891, The Retrospect of Practical Medicine and Surgery:

     We need not here discuss the performance of instrumental osteoclasy, for it has never been received with favour in this country.

   • 1896, Abraham Jacobi, Therapeutics of Infancy and Childhood, page 100:

     The tendency to flat-foot acquired through the flabbiness of the ligamentous apparatus during the attempts of the child at locomotion requires straightening and sustaining by a shoe made strong enough to support the ankle; scoliosis, a Sayre's plater-of-Paris or a felt jacket; the rhachitical groove round and above the insertion of the diaphragm, well-directed gumnastics of the chest; inflexible and ugly curvatures of the long bones, either osteoclasy (fracturing of the curved bone while leaving the periosteum intact, and resetting) or osteotomy (straightening the bone after it has undergone a cutting operation).