A memoir on indolent ulcers, and their surgical treatment / by John Gay.

  • Gay, John, 1812-1885.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A memoir on indolent ulcers, and their surgical treatment / by John Gay. 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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    application of stimulating ointments and caustics, or by the long-continued pressure of an ill-applied or un- necessary bandage. It directly results, as Mr. Iiain- wortli says, from the “stimulus of a morbid influence or abortive attempts at reparation and may be safely regarded as a sure indication of an inherent readi- ness on the part of the ulcer tissues to heal. The thickness of the edge, as Mr. Syme remarks^ is, alone, no criterion of the depth to which the ul- cerative process has extended. In some instances, the edge is thickened in common with the adjoining skin, the swelling in both being due to one and the same cause ; whilst in others—generally those in which the border disease is confined within a narrow compass and the edges “ welted,”—the thickening appears rather to arise from disorder affecting principally the tissues in which the ulcer is more immediately imbedded. It is often greatest when these changes are limited simply to an addition of matter by inflammatory or passive ex- udation ; and least, when they consist in a more or less abiding alteration of the integral constituents of the tissues themselves. 4th. The surrounding skin will generally be found affected by inflammatory disease in a more or less active state, and for a distance, more or less considerable, from the edge of the sore. It may present various grades and kinds of thickening by infiltration from that of simple or solid oedema to a state resembling elephan- c