On the dressing of stumps : old method, Lister's antiseptic plan, the Bordeaux treatment of stumps, Burow's plan, modified by the author, comparative statistics / by Louis Bauer.

  • Bauer, Louis, 1814-1898.
Date:
[1877]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the dressing of stumps : old method, Lister's antiseptic plan, the Bordeaux treatment of stumps, Burow's plan, modified by the author, comparative statistics / by Louis Bauer. 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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    OISE THE DRESSING OF STUMPS. BY LOUIS BAUER, M. D., M. R. C. S., ENG., ETC. If a surgeon to-da}’ should claim the healing of a wound or of a fracture as the merit of his wTork, he would place himself in the alternative attitude of an ignoramus or pretender. Experiments upon the lower animals and microscopic investigation have most thor- oughly dispelled such a delusion. Nature has amply provided for the repair of such injuries, healing taking place b}' first inten- tion or bj' suppuration ; b}' a process both spontaneous and invariable. The perfection of surgical art is reached when the injured parts are placed in the most favorable conditions for repair. The latter itself needs hardly any assistance. Whilst the simplest means subserve the object, artifice is more likely^ to disturb the spontaneous action and cause mischief. In studying the elementary changes in structures concerned in an incised wound, a steadily progressive metamorphosis in the structural elements is noticeable terminat- ing eventually with cicatrization. The details of that process are both highly' interesting and instructive. The first changes exhibited by the wounded surface is thrombosis of the su- perficial capillaries, whilst the deeper ones considerably dilute. Thus a larger volume the transfusion of serum and the migra- tion of white blood corpuscles into their parenchyma, rendering it succulent and soft. The corpuscles of the connective tissue, originally so delicate and diversified in form, exhibit themselves under the microscope as large and spheroidal cells with, proliferated nuclei. And next begins the division and multiplication of cells ad in- finitum, in which the cysto-blasts largely participate. By their automatic move- ments, the cells continuously change their places, glide up and downwards, from one side of the wound to the other, until, at last, thej' gather in groups, press together, elongate (fibro-plastic cells) and form scar tissue. Before, however, this stage is reached, numerous new capillaries have already sprung up combining with others of their own and the opposite side, forming anastamoses and loops, passing through one another in the center of the wound and thus perfect the primitive con- nective tissue by which the two sides of the wound are united and the continuity re- established. It will thus be seen, that the wound unites b}* a neivly-formed tissue and not by immediate agglutination. Furthermore, that the new tissue passes through various