Dupuytren's contracture

chained_bear commented on the word Dupuytren's contracture

"I was nearly sure that what I was seeing in the left hand was not arthritis, but Dupuytren's contracture—an odd, hooklike drawing-in of the ring and little fingers toward the palm of the hand, caused by shortening of the palmar aponeurosis.... I contemplated the minor complication of describing Depuytren's contracture without calling it that, Baron Depuytren not having been born yet."

—Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross (NY: Bantam Dell, 2001), 1227–28 and 1229

Strangely, or perhaps not strangely, it's spelled two different ways on facing pages.

"He had been suffering from a condition in the right hand called Dupuytren's contracture—or at least it would be called that, once Baron Dupuytren got round to describing it in another sixty or seventy years. Caused by a thickening and shortening of the fibrous sheet that kept the hand's tendons in place when the fingers flexed, the result of it was to draw the ring finger in toward the palm of the hand."

—Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005), 147

January 29, 2010