Observations in surgery / by Benjamin Travers, jun.

  • Travers, Benjamin, 1783-1858.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations in surgery / by Benjamin Travers, jun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    53/246 (page 41)
    of serious mischief. In tlie young and robust such symptoms merely denote a sufficiency of the na- tural powers, and the expedition Avhich is being made in the process of repair. Apart from what has been already stated, there are good reasons^ for recommending caution in the frequent use of pur- gatives. They produce disquiet, if not actual dis- placement of adjusted surfaces, and they are apt to render the bowels and bladder unduly irritable, or the intestinal canal becomes torpid after several violent dejections, and thus there is created a fresh necessity for their aid, highly detrimental to the progress of the local cure. To a cause of this kind I have more than once been disposed to attribute the very slow rate at which muscular power is regained long after the bone was firmly united. The practice of blood-letting in fracture is now extinct in the metropolitan hospitals, and it is at present difficult to form a conception of the cases in which it could ever have proved either useful or necessary. When, at a late period, the system languishes, the method of support may sometimes be dilFusible, such as rapidly reaches the capillaries ; or it may be more concentrated, and instituted rather with a view to a prospective demand. Regard must al- ways be had to the habits of life; if they have been intemperate, the nature of the excess should be ascertained. This is a common injunction, but often not sufficiently attended to. That wine and