A guide to the aseptic treatment of wounds / by C. Schimmelbusch ; preface by E. von Bergmann ; tr. from the 2nd rev. German ed., with express permission of the author, by Frank J. Thornbury ; with 43 illustrations.

  • Schimmelbusch, Curt, 1860-1895.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to the aseptic treatment of wounds / by C. Schimmelbusch ; preface by E. von Bergmann ; tr. from the 2nd rev. German ed., with express permission of the author, by Frank J. Thornbury ; with 43 illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    20/258 (page 2)
    and those operated upon. This was the time in which wounds and fevers were regarded as inseparable, when healing without inflammation was unknown, and wound fever and inflammation appeared as the natural reaction of the injured organism. It was then that Pirogoff wrote his dissertation upon Fortune in Su7'gery, in which, after years of experience, he became so resigned to the feeling of powerlessness in his own art that he made the peculiarly adaptable announcement: that the influ- ence of the physician, the therapeutic resources, and mechanical dexterity are of no importance ; the results of an operation are dependent entirely upon chance. The scourges of sur- gery— as aptly styled by Pirogoff,— suppuration, purulent oedema, hospital gangrene, erysipelas, and tetanus, followed the surgeon step and pace, thwarting all his efforts. Eighty per cent, of all wounds are attacked with hospital gangrene, wrote Lindpainter from Nussbaum's Clinic in Munich. Erysipelas was so frequent with us that we might have regarded it as almost an expected occurrence. We made it a standing rule not to suture any scalp wound, as union by primary intention was practically never observed : and sutur- ing had at most the effect of favoring the development of erysipelas by causing retention of the secretions. Out of seven- teen cases of amputation in one year, eleven died of pyaemia alone. A complicated fracture in our department was seldom seen which, if not amputated immediately, was not attacked in a few days by purulent infection, hospital gangrene, or septicae- mia, which led to rapidly fatal termination. The mortality in complicated fractures in Volkmann's Clinic at Halle, in the many years' experience of his predecessors, as well as during his own practice, amounted to fully 40 per cent, and in the years 1871 and 1872, the number of victims claimed by pyaemia and erysipelas became so great that Volk- mann conceived the idea of closing his department for a time.