Apparatus for arresting hemorrhage after the extraction of teeth / by Dr Roberts.

  • Roberts William Alfred, -1880?
Date:
[1846?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Apparatus for arresting hemorrhage after the extraction of teeth / by Dr Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    APPAEATUS FOE AEEESTING HEMOEEHAGE AFTEE 'IHE EXTEACTION OF TEETH. By DR ROBERTS, F.R.S.S.A., &c., DENTIST AND SURGEON ; DENTIST TO GEORGE HERIOT'S HOSPITAL, ETC. Extracted from the Monthly Journal of Medical Science,—May 1846. It is well known, from the published reports of cases, and from the experience of many surgeons as well as dentists, that alarming hemor- rhage has occasionally followed the extraction of a tooth, even when so loose in its socket, as to require little force or dexterity for its removal. In the great proportion of such cases, the bleeding is the result of an hemorrhagic diathesis. In the same individuals, a slight scratch or an abrasion on any other part of the body might have evinced the morbid tendency; but the locality of the injured surface, with its heat and moisture, greatly favours the bleeding process. The situation, also, presents no inconsiderable obstacles to the arrest of the hemorrhage, and hence the difficulty which has been experienced in so many instances, and the fatal result in not a few. The actual cautery, caustics, and styptics, such as the sulphates of alumina and zinc, the acetate of lead, the protonitrate of mercury, turpentine, kino, &c. have, together with the constitutional treatment usually employed in hemorrhagic cases, been on too many occasions of no avail; and it now seems to be the decided conviction of the pro- fession, that the speediest and most efficacious mode of arresting an alve- olar hemorrhage is by direct pressure upon the bleeding point. In some cases, I have succeeded in accomplishing all that was de- sired, by the continued pressure of the finger on a dossil of lint placed in the socket; and in others, by a cork placed over the plug, and a bandage round the head tying up the jaws. But while the former mode cannot always be continued for such a length of time as is required, the latter is attended with many disadvantages; it is a practice not without danger; and has proved utterly inefficacious, in several melan- choly instances. Since the death of a young gentleman in 1842, whose case was read to this Society by the late Dr Hay, and afterwards published in the Monthly Journal, (March 1842, p. 264,) my attention has been strongly and anxiously directed to this subject, with a view to devise an apparatus, by which continued, steady, yet gentle pressure might be applied to the point from which the bleeding proceeds; and the com- presses which I am now permitted the favour of laying before your Society are the result. As yet they are unproved, but I trust, that EDINBURGH : SUTHERLAND & KNOX, 58 Princes Street.