Antiseptic therapeutics / by E.L. Trouessart ; translated by E.P. Hurd.

  • Hurd E. P. (Edward Payson), 1838-1899.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Antiseptic therapeutics / by E.L. Trouessart ; translated by E.P. Hurd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    • the chemical characters of the diastases. It is a poi- son at first muscular, then having an elective local- ization in the spinal cord. According to experiments made by these two observers, it is noteworthy that the bacillus does not seem capable of itself of producing tetanus; it needs besides a predisposing condition, such as a trau- matism, the presence of lactic acid, or of another microbe, such as the Microbacillus prodigiosus. Now several species of microbes abound in the sod. The presence, in the tissues, of lactic acid and the toxine peculiar to tlie microbe, destroys phagocy- tosis, which in the physiological state can of itself _ prevent the disease, as the leucocytes engulf the microbes and their spores and annihilate their toxic products (Vaillard and Vincent). In accordance with the etiology of this disease, we see the importance of seeking, at the very onset of the accidents, for the least solutions of continuity of the derm, and of treating them by the local anti- septics. The antiseptic dressing of accidental or operative wounds, to-day practiced by the majority of physicians and surgeons, ordinarily guarantees the patient against this complication. [The treatment of tetanus by subcutaneous injection of blood-serum from animals immune to the disease, has given some encouraging results. This serum contains certain antitoxines which have in numerous instances proved •curative when the disease has been fully established.