A probationary essay on carbuncle, submitted ... to ... the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh / [Sir Douglas Maclagan].

  • Maclagan, Douglas, Sir, 1812-1900.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A probationary essay on carbuncle, submitted ... to ... the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh / [Sir Douglas Maclagan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    typhoid symptomatic fever. But, upon the whole, it will he found better to adhere to the division into Simple or Idiopathic, and Pestilential or Sympto¬ matic, restricting the latter term to the Carbuncle of the plague and typhus. Anthrax seems to consist essentially of an inflam¬ mation of the cellular tissue of a gangrenous character, the affection of the skin being of a secondary nature, and not being always proportionate to the extent of disease in the cellular membrane. Indeed, it has al¬ ways been a remark with practical surgeons, that it is far from easy to ascertain from the state of the skin what the amount of mischief is which the dis¬ ease may be doing in the cellular tissue. Perhaps the best means we have of ascertaining the extent of the disease, is to feel for the termination of the circumscribed hardness which surrounds the base of the swelling, as it generally marks the spot where nature, in her endeavours to check the progress of the disease, has erected a barrier of lymph between the living and dead parts. The first appearance of the destructive process having attacked the skin, is the formation of nume¬ rous vesicles on the tumour. In many cases the ul¬ cerations are so numerous, that the surface of the tumour bears a strong resemblance to a portion of