Veterinary medicines : their actions and uses / by Finlay Dun.

  • Dun, Finlay, 1830-1897.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Veterinary medicines : their actions and uses / by Finlay Dun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/616 (page 35)
    in common use in veterinary practice are salts of aluminium, zinc, lead, copper, mercury, and arsenic, nitrate of silver, caustic, potash, and concentrated acids. These differ chiefly in the intensity of their action, some being so mild that they have no effect on the sound skin, and scarcely any on the mucous sur- faces ; and others so active as to cause extensive sloughing and purulent discharge. Those possessing the latter action some- times receive the special title of escharotics (fo-yapa, eschara, an eschar, scar, or scab). The difference between solid and fluid caustics is not great. The effects of the latter are more rapid and powerful, but more difficult to localize. The firing-iron, or actual cautery, when used at any temperature above a full red heat, acts in exactly the same manner as caustics, producing first a chemical action, and then a highly exalted vital action. Besides being used as a caustic, it is also much employed as an external irritant (p. 41). Caustics are used for many different purposes : for repressing soft, spongy, and exuberant granulations; for removing warts and other sorts of tumours, especially when so deep-seated and vascular that they cannot be safely extirpated by the knife ; for altering morbid actions of the skin or of wounds ; for exciting adhesive action in the walls of fistulse; for preventing the effects of poisoned wounds, in which case fluid caustics are often preferable to solid ones, on account of their readily pene- trating to all parts of the cavity ; for opening abscesses and forming issues ; for expediting and completing the destruction of sloughing textures ; and for arresting haemorrhage from acci- dental or surgical wounds. Caustics employed for the last-men- tioned purpose usually receive the special title of styptics (crrv^co, stiipho,-1 constringe ; a-rvuriKos, stuptikos, astringent). In using them, the blood should be removed by a sponge, and the part lightly pressed, so that the blood-vessels may be more readily seen, and the caustic applied to them with greater precision, and with as little destruction as possible of the surrounding textures. Acids. Acids (thus, aids, a point) are defined by the chemist as sub-