Results of surgical treatment, without antiseptics, in the Kilmarnock Infirmary : being a paper read before the Glasgow Medico-Chirurgical Society / by John C. M'Vail.

  • John McVail
Date:
[1880]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Results of surgical treatment, without antiseptics, in the Kilmarnock Infirmary : being a paper read before the Glasgow Medico-Chirurgical Society / by John C. M'Vail. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    553, with two deaths. The latter were 292, with. four deaths; regarding which, Mr. Lister remarks, the deaths were eight times as numerous. That seems to me very instructive. And it certainly looks bad for the septic* treatment. But, as Mr. Lister also says, cases should be pondered, not numbered. And the result of pondering is as follows. The two deaths in the antiseptic list occurred after removing the breast. The four septic were (1) amputation of the penis, (2) a plastic operation on the nose, (3) excision of the tongue, and (4) the opening of a a small abscess of the neck. Now, it is obvious that, under any system of treatment, excision of the mamma is much less likely to be followed by blood-poisoning than the first three of the septic cases. In fact, of all operations, the three are among the most liable to be followed by hospital diseases. And as the list of antiseptic cases may be presumed not to con- tain any such, and the septic list may include a number which recovered, the two lists are simply not comparable. But the fourth septic case is the opening of a small abscess in the neck. Mr. Lister takes credit for calling all operations resulting in death major operations. Therefore the com- paratively small list of septic operations is saddled * Used throughout this Paper as meaning simple or non- antiseptic.
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