The treatment of wounds, ulcers, and abscesses : by W. Watson Cheyne.

  • Cheyne, William Watson, Sir, 1852-1932.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of wounds, ulcers, and abscesses : by W. Watson Cheyne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    due to the presence of the fluid contents, one does, to some extent, remove a cause of inflammation, but, nevertheless, one leaves the greater part of the curative work to be done by nature. That nature will in most cases prove equal to the task, provided only that the wound is kept aseptic, and that no fresh cause of inflammation enters in the shape of pyogenic organisms, and that the general health is kept up, is amply proved by the results which have been obtained in cases of abscesses connected with spinal disease which have been treated by simple aseptic drainage, as was the method employed by Sir Joseph Lister for many years. I have elsewhere given the statistics of cases treated in this way, from which it appears that over 70 per cent, of psoas and other abscesses connected with spinal disease have completely recovered under this treatment. Nevertheless, even in these cases, the period during which the patients were under treatment was exceptionally long, on an average, something Kke eight months, and during that period the patients were absolutely conflned to bed, and at any time an unskilful dresser might make a mistake in his aseptic work and allow the entrance of micro-organisms, thus rendering the former trouble futile. Since the pathology of chronic abscesses has been more clearly ascertained, and we know that we have to