Hot water as a haemostatic in surgery / by Charles B. Keetley.

  • Keetley, Charles Bell, 1848-1909.
Date:
[1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hot water as a haemostatic in surgery / by Charles B. Keetley. 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.

    1/4
    J A* c.*i / 7 \ j * *> HOT WATER AS A HAEMOSTATIC IN SURGERY. BY CHARLES B. KEETLEY, F.R.C.S., Assistant-Surgeon to the West London Hospital. That hot water is a valuable means of stopping certain cases of haemorrhage is a fact which I have long observed and frequently- turned to practical account. At the same time it is a truth universally known that hot water is a valuable aid to increase +he flow of blood after venesection. These statements, though apparently opposed to each other, are unquestionably true. Having had the good fortune to go to an excellent school where haemorrhagic noses were not infrequent, I first observed its efficacy in many cases of epistaxis, both traumatic and spon- taneous. Afterwards, having read a notice of a paper by an American physician (I have unfortunately and ungratefully for- gotten his name), stating the blanching power' of hot water injections into the vagina, I suggested to Mr. Furneaux Jordan that he should use it as a styptic in operating on recto-vaginal fistula. He did so with entire success in a case treated at the Queen's Hospital, Birmingham, in the autumn of 1875. In February, 1876, I wrote to the British Medical Journal a short note on the treatment of epistaxis by hot water, which probably attracted no one’s attention. In 1876, Dr. Windelband recommended injections of hot water in cases of uterine haemorrhage. Temperature of the water should be from 38° to 39° Reaumur, and in severe cases 41° (= 117° to 120°, in severe cases, 124° Falir.). See Medical Times, August, 1876. Dr. De Mussy has used Dr. Chapman’s hot water bags to the spine for the purpose of checking intra-uterine haemorrhage. But the first mention which I can discover of the haemostatic