Observations on some of the more recent methods of treating wounds; and, On excision of the knee-joint / by Edward Lund.

  • Lund, Edward.
Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on some of the more recent methods of treating wounds; and, On excision of the knee-joint / by Edward Lund. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    OBSERVATIONS ON SOME OE THE MORE RECENT METHODS OF TREATING WOUNDS, “ He jests at scars who never felt a wound/5 If we accept as the definition of a wound, in surgical language, a dissolution in the continuity of living tissues from external causes, it will be evident that all wounds may be arranged under one of two classes, either as closed wounds or as open wounds. In the former class, although the tissues have been broken down and their integrity destroyed, the elastic skin which covered them remains entire. The air is excluded, and they may be said to be covered in and protected from any injurious influences which might arise from that source; whereas, it is a condition of an open wound, however produced, that the epidermic covering of the body has been divided; tissues which are not fitted to resist the ceaseless in- fluences of atmospheric changes, either chemical or thermal, have been thus laid bare, and a new action established in order to protect and restore the injured parts. In the former class will be found all simple fractures, in which not only are bones broken, and their continuity interrupted, but veins and small arteries are ruptured, and muscular fibre lacerated, as well as all contusions with effusions of blood and lacerations of tendinous or ligamentous tissues. All these injuries may occur without the possible access of air, and must be regarded as wounds, as far as structural changes are concerned, but yet they are closed wounds. On the contrary, in the second class we have compound fractures, fractures simple at