Observations on wounds, and their complications by erysipelas, gangrene and tetanus : and on the principal diseases and injuries of the head, ear and eye / by the Baron D.J. Larrey ; tr. from the French by E.F. Rivinus.

  • Larrey, D. J. (Dominique Jean), baron, 1766-1842.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on wounds, and their complications by erysipelas, gangrene and tetanus : and on the principal diseases and injuries of the head, ear and eye / by the Baron D.J. Larrey ; tr. from the French by E.F. Rivinus. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    by more or less intense pain, according to the particular nature of the injured nervous cords. The painful sensation occasioned by the lesion of the nerves of relation is infinitely more quick and acute than that which results from the lesion of nerves of organic life. This latter pain is accompanied with a feeling of local chilliness and painful anxiety. In such cases the increase of sensibility renders the wound, susceptible of hospital gan- grene, which is to be well distinguished from gangrene, whose cause is, on the contrary, the complete attrition of the tissues. The forcible separation of the tendons or of fleshy masses is attended by very great contraction, by effusion of the fluids within the lamellated texture or the interstices of the muscles, by an inflammatory engorgement, by erethismus frequently and sphacelus. We shall have occasion to speak of all these com- plications. Of Foreign Bodies. Gun-shot wounds are finally complicated by the presence, in the living tissues, of the foreign bodies which did produce them. These bodies vary indefinitely in their form, nature, size, and in their manner of being lodged with the parts upon which they rest, or with which they are in contact. Their search is an extremely delicate matter which we can only be so far justified to undertake as it may not prove injurious to the integrity of the parts or the organic functions. If in the first moments they cannot be extracted with ease and without any more serious inconvenience, it must be left to nature to point out to art the best method to be pursued of facilitating their extraction. In all cases it is proper to attempt to search for these extrane- ous bodies (projectiles for instance) in the shortest and least dan- gerous way. For that purpose it will be necessary to enlarge the orifice of the wounds which allow their passage, or rather to make counter-openings if practicable, in order to extract them with greater ease. Such as have become embedded into the bones or within their interstices cannot, unless they are very superficial, be extracted without great inconvenience by means of such mechanical instruments, as the more or less