Remarks on a case of compound dislocation of the ankle with other injuries : illustrating the antiseptic system of treatment / by Joseph Lister.

  • Lister, Joseph, Baron, 1827-1912.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on a case of compound dislocation of the ankle with other injuries : illustrating the antiseptic system of treatment / by Joseph Lister. 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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    wound itself was covered with a layer of material de- signed to protect it from the stimulating and irritating influence of the carbolic acid in the antiseptic stratum. You have often seen this “protective” in use in other cases, but I desire now to direct your attention to it more particularly. Of all those who use antiseptics in surgery, I suspect that I apply them least to the surface of the wound. After the first dressing, the object which I always aim at is to have the material in contact with the exposed tissues approximate as closely as possible to the perfectly bland and neutral characters of the healthy hving tex- tures. If you consider the circumstances of a simple fracture, which you cannot too often caU to mind if you wish to keep your ideas clear and right upon this subject, —if you remember how the severe contused internal wound, with the interstices of the mangled tissues loaded with extravasated blood, recovers quickly and surely under the protection of the unbroken integument, it is plain that ah that is required in an external wound is to guard it against the disturbing influence of exter- nal agency. The injured tissues do not need to be “ stimulated” or treated with any mysterious “specific ;” ALL THAT THEY NEED IS TO BE LET ALONE. Nature will then take care of them : those which are weakened wfll recover, and those which have been deprived of vitality by the injury will serve as pabulum for their living neigh- bours. Now, of aU external agencies the most injurious by far is putrefaction, and this, above all, we endeavour to exclude. But a substance employed with this object, if sufficiently potent to destroy the life of the putrefac-