On antiseptic osteotomy / Professor Volkmann.

  • Volkmann, Richard von, 1830-1889.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On antiseptic osteotomy / Professor Volkmann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    at tlie expense of the divided bones. Both patients have made a good recovery, and are walking about well with high-soled boots, which were rendered necessary because in both cases the affected limb had from long disuse been somewhat less developed than that of the opposite side. The justification of operations like these undoubtedly depends entirely on the possibility of guaranteeing a successful termination. We believe that we are not assuming too much in saying that we have by degrees attained sufficient practice and experience in the antiseptic treatment of wounds, to be really able to promise such a result with certainty. I had hoped to have been able to publish before now the com- munication which I made on the antiseptic treatment and Lister's mode of dressing, on the occasion of the third Congress der deutschen Gesellschaft fur Chirurgie; but as this has unfortunately not been the case, I may perhaps be allowed to mention here a few facts for the purpose of showing how greatly the danger of some forms of injury which were formerly followed by a very high rate of mortality, is diminished by this procedure. Since the introduction of the antiseptic method into my clinique, now exactly two years ago (at the end of November 1872), no single patient suffering from a compound fracture in which conservative treatment was attempted, has died. Amongst this number are in- cluded even those cases in which conservative treatment was only resorted to because the patients would not give their consent to i amputation, and also those in which we at first underestimated the severity of the injury, and afterwards intermediate or secondary amputation had to be undertaken on account of haemorrhage or gangrene. The number of compound fractures successfully treated without a single fatal result in our hospital, which is old and always overcrowded, and offers the most unhealthy hygienic conditions, amounts at present to 31. Amongst these were as many as 19 compound fractures of the leg, in several instances much comminuted and often complicated with most severe bruising and laceration of soft parts. There were also two compound comminuted fractures of the patella, both of which recovered with movable joints. No case of pyaemia has occurred for a year and a half, i.e., since July 1873, although during this period alone about 60 major amputations have taken place. Osteotomy has only been practised extensively during the last year, and whereas it used formerly to be restricted to a few isolated cases in the leg, its employment is now extended to the thigh. In the Centralblatt fur Chirurgie, No. 1, 1874, are published two cases of extreme contraction of the hip-joint, in which I removed a wedge-shaped piece of bone from the femur below the trochanter. During the year 1874, I have performed osteotomy 13 times (the division of two bones in the same patient being counted as two operations), and of these 10 recovered without any suppuration at all,