A description of the newly-invented elastic tourniquet, for the use of armies and employment in civil life : its uses and applications, with remarks on the different methods of arresting hemorrhage from gunshot and other wounds / by Thomas Scott Lambert.

  • Lambert, T. S. (Thomas Scott), 1819-1897.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A description of the newly-invented elastic tourniquet, for the use of armies and employment in civil life : its uses and applications, with remarks on the different methods of arresting hemorrhage from gunshot and other wounds / by Thomas Scott Lambert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    of the coat, at the upper part of the arm, a little more in front near the elbow; while half-way between the inner seam of the pants and the top of the thigh, at its middle, is a good guide for making pressure upon the main artery of the lower extremity. Use of the Elastic Tourniquet on the Battle-Field. The advantages of this tourniquet over all others hitherto in use. are obvious upon slight inspection. They consist in its sim- plicity of construction ; its ready adaptation to the limb, even by the wounded person himself; its perfect security and efficiency; the comparative ease with which it may be borne for many hours, or even days, if necessary ; its non-interference with the collateral circulation, which goes on as usual, thus not endangering the loss of the limb ; and, lastly, its freedom from any danger of exciting inflammation and suppuration, or phlebitis, so often caused by the ordinary field tourniquet. Although it is believed to be more especially adapted to the field, yet it is remarkably well adapted, also, to the treatment of aneurism by compression, as well as to ordinary cases of amputation, etc. The question naturally presents itself, in connection with this instrument, how many of them should be supplied to an army in actual war ? Besides the few field tourniquets in the hands of medical officers in each regiment, each soldier in the Kussian, Prussian and Austrian service, is furnished with a simple strap and buckle, with directions to apply it firmly on the limb between the wound and the heart, in case of a wound attended with hemor- rhage ; and in the British army, in the Crimean war, each medical officer, (according to Sir John Hall, Inspector-General of Hospi- tals,) or his orderly, carried three or four tourniquets along, to restrain any alarming hemorrhage ; while each soldier was fur- * To fold up the instrument so as to be contained in the box: slip the large pad on the non-elastic within three or four inches of the elastic ; then wind the elastic (the wings being closed) twice around the large pad, holding it all the while in the left hand ; then bring the concave surfaces of the two pads together, and fold up the non-elastic, and fit it snugly within and over the wings of the small pad; then wind the elastic around both pads, and tuck under the end, when it will be found to fit the box.