Report on surgery : a paper read before the Ohio State Medical Society, at its annual meeting , held at Delaware, June, 1868 / by W. H. Mussey.

  • Mussey, William Heberden, 1818-1882.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on surgery : a paper read before the Ohio State Medical Society, at its annual meeting , held at Delaware, June, 1868 / by W. H. Mussey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    17/20 (page 15)
    LOCAL ANAESTHESIA, With the spray-producer, is one of the wonders of the discoveries, but it is capable of a very limited application in surgical operations mainly to the opening of abscesses, removing of nails from fingers or toes, and in opening of abscesses the pain of the freezing process and the return of sensation, often exceeds that of a direct operation with- out its use. [From the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer.] AN INSTRUMENT FOE KEEPING THE JA.WS APART DUPING OPERATIONS IN THE MOUTH OR THROAT. By W. H. MUSSEY, Professor Operative Surgery and Surgical Pathology, Miami Medical College. Cincinnati. The necessity for a substitute for the wooden or cork gag to keep the mouth open during operations within it, especially in children, led me to the use of a large sized wire eyelid separator, in the case of a young child with ex- cessive hypertrophy of the tonsils, where repeated attacks of acute inflammation had caused adhesions of the glands to the pillars of the arch of the palate, necessitating the separation of the adhesions by dissections with the blunt- edged knife, previous to the application of the tonsilotome. The substitution was so satisfactory that I endeavored to improve upon it, and projected an instrument with the means to fasten it at any desired angle, the ends curved back upon the cheeks so as not to be in the way of the operator. Mr. Tieman, of New York, has given expression to the idea, in the instrument represented in the accompa- nying cut. It consists in two pieces of wire appropriately curved, united by rivets, forming hinges at the two extremities, the center curved in the manner of the eyelid speculum, but larger, and adapted to the shape of the jaws, so as to rest when applied upon the alveolus of each maxilla, a light bar is placed upon one side, to which a screw fastens it at any