Hospital gangrene : a lecture delivered to Prof. Blackman's class at the Medical College of Ohio, session of 1860-61 / by Chas. S. Tripler.

  • Tripler, Chas. S. (Charles Stuart), 1806-1866.
Date:
[1863]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hospital gangrene : a lecture delivered to Prof. Blackman's class at the Medical College of Ohio, session of 1860-61 / by Chas. S. Tripler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    as possible all bad smell, a layer of charpie charged with camphor and powdered charcoal was placed over all, and kept in place by com- presses and Whidages moistened with chloride of soda. The improve- ment was now very manifest. The wound was cleaned off from one day to the next, and in the most complicated cases the parts had re- sumed their natural aspect in three or four days. This, result seemed to us the more valuable in that the tincture of iodine can be used everywhere, that its application is very easy, and finally that no gen- eral disturbance of the economy was produced by its absorption. One would suppose from this strong and unqualified endorsement of the merits of the tincture of iodine that the question was settled, and we now had an unfailing means of combatting the worst forms of hospital gangrene. But, no ; far from it. Like Boggie's lancet, which failed in the hands of his next-door neighbor in the same epi- demic, we find the claims of the tincture of iodine to confidence con- troverted almost upon the spot. Salleron, while admitting that it may he of use in a superficial lesion, and rather in a relapse than in a prim- itive case, says he has never seen it produce any sensible dynamic action, never any general reaction, followed by the calm and comfort that the actual cautery frequently, and the perchloride of iron almost always produces. • Salleron goes on in his memoir to examine critically and analytical- ly all the caustics Ave have enumerated, discusses their advantages and disadvantages in a philosophical manner, points out the objections to their employment in some cases from their immediate danger, as in the case of the actual cautery over a denuded joint, in the vicinity of the femoral or carotid artery, etc. ; in other cases, from the difficulty of controlling and limiting their action, as in the use of the caustic potass., and in all from the uncertainty and insufficiency of their results. All these difficulties, he insists, are met and obviated by the use of the perchloride of iron, while it possesses positive advantages that are to be derived from no other agent that has been yet proposed. For example, he asserts that it is less frightful, though much more painful, than the hot iron ; it causes no loss of substance ; it never en- larges the wound,—on the contrary, it usually contracts it by unload- ing the neighboring tissues. Applied to joints denuded of their soft parts, it has no pernicious effects upon the ligaments or synovial ihembrane ; it rather promotes the absorption of any effusion into the articulation. I have not the time to go on with the long catalogue of advantages cited. I will only add that the author confesses that the pain caused by the application is excruciating to the last degree. He has even persuaded himself that this pain itself is an advantage, and