Report of cases treated by a modified Bier-Klapp method of passive hyperemia : read before the Medical Society of the County of Albany, November 7, 1906 / by James N. Vander Veer.

  • Vander Veer, James N., 1877-1937.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of cases treated by a modified Bier-Klapp method of passive hyperemia : read before the Medical Society of the County of Albany, November 7, 1906 / by James N. Vander Veer. 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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    patient was on a trip through Canada. Considerable pus was evacuated and the pain abated somewhat. Two days later, however, the pain recommenced, and he was compelled to seek further surgical advice. The patient presented on the back of his neck an indurated area of some three and one-half inches in diameter, very painful to touch, and in the center were two parallel incisions about one and one-half inches long. These led down to an inside sloughing mass which discharged a sero-purulent material. The probe sank into the mass for a distance of about one and one-half inches. There was no enlargement of the glands. The patient’s temperature was ioi°; his pulse, 80. Cups were applied in this case for twenty minutes at a time, every three hours, in the routine of five minutes on and three minutes off. Zinc ointment was well rubbed into the area surrounding the incision, so far as the patient could bear the application, and a flaxseed poultice was applied till the following morning, followed by hot bichloride packs (1-10,000). It became necessary to lessen the application of the cups, by reason of the gangrenous appearance of the edges of the wound, and they were applied only once a days The patient was given a cathartic (and put upon a tonic containing iron) and the temperature immediately dropped, following a good evacuation of the bowels. There was no restriction as to diet, and upon the fourth day a slough was removed through one of the incisions, leaving a hole the size of a horse chestnut. This seemed to be a complication in the case contrary to desires. An irrigation of diluted nitric acid twice daily was ordered. The patient was discharged from the hospital on the 29th, but for the last four days had been attending to his business downtown, simply going back to the hospital for the Bier treatment and the dressing of the wound. At the end of the second week, or on August 6th, the very last of the wound had closed, leaving a parallel scar about one-quarter inch in length, but with no deformity or contraction of the tissue beneath as yet. The patient has been seen frequently since that time, and remarks at the ease and simplicity utilized in this manner of treatment as compared with previous experiences with abscesses. Case No. 6. Dr. W. A., aged 65, has suffered for six weeks with a furuncle on the back of his neck, and when I saw him the furuncle extended from one pinna of the ear to the opposite side, and in vertical aspect was four inches or more in size. The area in the center was slightly honey- combed, and led one to suspect a condition of actinomycosis. It was very painful to touch. The glands in the axilla were very tender, as well as those in the infra-clavicular region. On both sides, behind and beneath the ear, was a protruding area the size of a pigeon’s egg, which fluctuated upon handling. In the center of the wound, about this honey- combed area, there, was a bogginess differing decidedly from the hard indurated feeling of the remainder of the mass, and which, upon pressure, yielded a thick pus from the openings. The patient’s past history was one of chronic alcoholism, together with many severe accidents experienced during the last few years, and he