©Wellcome Library, London
 
 

This illustration by the British surgeon, Charles Bell (1774-1842, later knighted), shows a mid-thigh amputation using a screw tourniquet. A circumference of skin has been cut below the amputation line so as to pull it over the stump. Bell was present at Waterloo and described the scene on the battlefield while he was attempting to treat all the casualties: ‘It is impossible to convey to you the picture of human misery continually before my eyes ... While I amputated one man's thigh, there lay at one time 13, all beseeching to be taken next ... It was a strange thing to feel my clothes stiff with blood, and my arms powerless with the exertion of using the knife'.

Source: Sir Charles Bell. Illustrations of the great operations of surgery. Longmans, London 1820.