A fragment or piece broken off, especially in medical contexts referring to bone splinters or tissue fragments.
A variant of 'aporrhegma,' from Greek 'apo' (away) + 'rhiegma' (a breaking). Both spellings were used in medieval and ancient medical texts somewhat interchangeably.
Different ancient Greek texts spelled this word slightly differently depending on regional dialects, but they all meant the same thing—annoying little bone chips that surgeons had to dig out of wounds before antibiotics made infections less of a death sentence.
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