A treatise on aneurism : with numerous additions, and a Memoir on the ligature of the principal arteries of the extremities / by Antonio Scarpa ... ; with engravings ; translated from the Italian, with additional cases and an appendix, by John Henry Wishart.

  • Scarpa, Antonio, 1752-1832.
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on aneurism : with numerous additions, and a Memoir on the ligature of the principal arteries of the extremities / by Antonio Scarpa ... ; with engravings ; translated from the Italian, with additional cases and an appendix, by John Henry Wishart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    a matter of Indifference^ on account of the above- mentioned obligation which it imposes on the surgeon to lay bare and detach ■ large portion of the artery from the contiguous parts. Daliymple,• in his ac- count of the ligature of the common carotid artery for the cure of an aneurism situated in the orhit, wrote, that his two ligatures were applied at the distance of an huh and <t quarter, from each other, which dis- tance he W8J enabled to adopt, because the aneurism was not situated in the neck. And it would be im- possible to lay bare the artery to an equal extent, when the aneurisms] tumor is situated at the upper part of the groin, or in the upper part of the axilla. But supposing even that it were possible in every case to lay bare a considerable portion of artery, and even more than an inch and a quarter, what would become of these two considerable insulated portions of artery included between the two ligatures ? These portions of artery, as every one foresees, are very soon converted into a dead and putrid substance, which rests upon the bottom of the wound, from which it cannot be removed, until the two ligatures are separated. This dead substance necessarily irri- tates the wound, and much more than a pledgit of soft ointment, which it is wished to exclude even from the first dressing, as likely to oppose the union of the wound, under the erroneous supposition that this union could take place, in spite of the presence of the two ligatures hanging out of the wound, and of a sphacellated substance seated at the bottom of it. To this we may add those copious suppurations and si- nuous ulcers, which are the necessary consequences of extensive and deep incisions and laceration of the cellular substance; these suppurations, if they do not * Medico-Chir. Transactions, vol. vi.