Observations on some of the more recent methods of treating wounds; and, On excision of the knee-joint / by Edward Lund.

  • Lund, Edward.
Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on some of the more recent methods of treating wounds; and, On excision of the knee-joint / by Edward Lund. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    we to deal with the constant effects of an impure atmosphere, but the patients who enter these institutions come in with consti¬ tutions already enervated by what may be called an artificial mode of life. Let us consider for a moment the habits of the artisan in any one of our manufacturing towns—the many hours of toil, the close ill-ventilated workshop with its heated atmosphere, the still closer room or bedroom, inappropriate food, an exhausted nervous system kept up to a high state of excessive tension by intemperate habits, or by acute or chronic alcoholism. Let a man thus situated receive an injury, and see how far he will be prepared for the reparative processes as contrasted with the man who leads a country life, and whose wear and tear of body or of mind are not a fractional part of his. Thus it is that surgeons vary so much in the estimate they form of the value of particular modes of treating*wounds. The circumstances under which the wounds are to be treated, and the constitutions of the patients to be dealt with must be considered, and for this reason doubtless the means practised in surgery in. this respect will ever vary greatly with the class of patients under treatment. It is notorious that in country practice very simple methods of treatment suffice, whereas amongst the denizens of large towns we have to deal with nervous constitutional irritation, which is difficult to control and most unfavorable in its influences. Hence have sprung up from time to time all that multitude of surgical dressings which have been applied to wounds since the earliest records of the surgical art. And yet in all this variety there is one great principle which pervades the whole. Not only is it the exclusion of air, but as experience must have taught the earlier experimentalists, something more than this is wanting. It is not air as a harmless gaseous compound which is to be corrected, but certain secondary products which it contains that are the source of danger. Decay and putrefaction are to be avoided, and this has been attempted by the dressings which have been used; hence it is that we find, added to the resins and oint¬ ments which have been employed, aromatic gums and empyreu- matic substances of all descriptions, such as were known by experience to avert putrefactive changes. The history of the