The treatment of wounds as based on evolutionary laws / by C. Pitfield Mitchell.

  • Mitchell, Charles Pitfield.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of wounds as based on evolutionary laws / by C. Pitfield Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    No definite limit, however, can at present be put to the applicability of dry-dressing. There are many facts congruous with the inference suggested by evolutionary principles that uncontaminated pus may be less pernicious than we are apt to think, and its mere removal with the causes of its formation may in many cases suffice to restore the normal state. If we compare the general design of the system of treat- ment in possession—Prof. Lister’s—with that of the system we have differentiated, it appears that while the one seeks to promote the healing of wounds by controlling the secondary causes of non-union, the other, with a more comprehensive rec- ognition of the conditioning forces, seeks to promote healing by controlling the primary causes of non-union, both by direct interference and by turning to account and strengthening the organisms’ innate resources. At the same time there is dis- tinguished a residue of cases where secondary causes are first in point of importance in actual practice. The discussion may be properly brought to a close by answering the question : In what is this system principally de- serving of espousal and trial? In the first place a point of contact is made between this branch of the science and art of surgery and the most generalized division of the science of biology; the method advocated has for its theoretical basis deductions from biological laws formulating some of the deep- est truths of our existence. Also, it may be noticed, this union of the special truths of surgery with the general truths of evolution is itself an illustration of the process of evolution in one of its most interesting aspects.* And if we study, as written in surgical history, the develop- ment of the art which is our theme, we find that each progres- sive step has throughout been along the path we have just trodden. From the age when hemorrhage was arrested by applying red-hot metal plates to the raw surfaces of the flaps, to our own days of refined ligatures and torsion, the mode of advancement has been the same; the intelligent use of a * See Spencer’s Principles of Psychology, vol. i., p. 343.