Further report on aseptic and septic surgical cases : with special reference to the infection from the skin / by C.B. Lockwood.

  • Lockwood, Charles Barrett, 1856-1914.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Further report on aseptic and septic surgical cases : with special reference to the infection from the skin / by C.B. Lockwood. 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.

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    solution 15>s,s or TBW Boll11 was also able to sterilise the hands by washing with soft soap and hot water, with subsequent immersion in 3 per cent, carbolic lotion, followed by ?J0v per- chloride of mercury lotion. The last observer cleaned the nails with 10 per cent, iodoform gauze soaked in 5 per cent, carbolic lotion. Halsted and his assistants took even greater pains to disinfect their hands, but found that after the greatest efforts the epidermis scraped from them infected gelatine tubes. This seems to be an unreasonably severe test, and beyond the needs of actual practice. I myself found that after the nails had been cut short,12 and the hands scrubbed with soap and hot water, and dipped into T1feir solu- Fig. 3.—Gelatine culture inoculated with scrapings from clean normal skin, stained with fuchsin. From a niicrophotograph by Mr. Cosens. tion of perchloride of mercury, the fingers could be dabbed with impunity upon plate cultures of gelatine or agar-agar; also that scrapings of the skin of the fingers gave no result; therefore, I believe that the hands can be sterilised, and afterwards kept so by occasionally dipping them into suitable antiseptics, such as solution of perchloride of mercury I5\i5. The skin of the patient is a much harder problem. The difficulty of disinfecting it has already been exemplified, and 11 Frantz Boll: Zur Desinfection der Httnde, Deutsche med. Wochen- schrift, 18!>0. No. 17. He refers to the contradictory results of KUmmell, Filrster, Fiirbringer, and Landsborg. 121 have obtained streptococci from beneath nails which seemed to have been cleaned.