Observations on the advantages of exposing wounds to the air after capital operations; with some remarks upon the removal of scirrhus tumours from the breast / Communicated in a letter to Samuel Bard.

  • Hosack, David, 1769-1835
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the advantages of exposing wounds to the air after capital operations; with some remarks upon the removal of scirrhus tumours from the breast / Communicated in a letter to Samuel Bard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/12
    OBSERVATIONS, &c. New-York, June 29,1813. Dear Sir, Many years since, you related to me the case of a patient whose limb you amputated, in which you found great difficul¬ ty in restraining the hemorrhage, but in which you at last succeeded, by keeping the stump exposed to the air a consi¬ derable length of time after the removal of the limb. Although hemorrhage has ever constituted one of the most formidable embarrassments attendant upon surgical opera¬ tions, and much ingenuity has been exercised in devising a great variety of astringent and other applications, for the suppression of it, yet this practice has not, to my knowledge, sufficiently attracted the attention of surgeons. Mr. Coop¬ er, one of the latest and most respectable writers on surgery, incidentally notices the styptic effects of cold air, in pro¬ moting the contraction of the vessels; but he appears to in- troduce the remark for the purpose of showing, that no de¬ pendence is to be placed upon it, for he adds, that, “ upon the wound being dressed, and the patient placed in bed, not an hour elapses before the renewal of the hemorrhage neces¬ sitates us to remove the dressings.”^ In the following case, which, from the advanced age of the patient, the duration of the disease, his debilitated habit of body, and other circumstances, was of all others the mo^f; unpromising, the exposure of the limb was attended with the * See Cooper’s Dictionary of Practical Surgery, Dorsey’s edition, vol L j>, 438.