Aseptic surgery / by Charles Barrett Lockwood.

  • Lockwood, Charles Barrett, 1856-1914.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Aseptic surgery / by Charles Barrett Lockwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    disease. Twenty-one of these cases died, giving a mortality of 13-4 per cent. In the previous ten years (1874 to 1883) 192 amputations were per- formed through the thigh, with a mortality of twenty- nine, or 15'10 per cent. Amputations are becoming less frequent and less dangerous. But statistics such as these give no idea of the saving of pain or of the lessened stay in the hospital. The patients, too, appreciate the new order, and seldom shrink when an operation is advised. I have said that our hospital statistics do not record cases of suppuration, but within my own recollection the improvement has been very striking. Moreover, should such a misfortune occur, the sup- puration is of the mildest type. Often its presence is unknown until the dressing is removed on the tenth day, and it speedily subsides. Doubtless a great proportion of it is due to imperfect disinfection of the skin. My earlier operations for the radical cure of non-strangulated hernia were done as far back as 1886,1 and since then we have made great improve- 1 This paragraph and some of what follows is quoted from my book On the Radical Cure of Hernia, Hydrocele, and Varicocele,'1 p. 15/ ct seq. 16