Discourses on the nature and cure of wounds / by John Bell.

  • John Bell
Date:
1800
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discourses on the nature and cure of wounds / by John Bell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/518 (page 3)
    ihagy was fatal to moll of thofe who needed to fuffer this operation; and the few who furvived, lingered through all the miferies of a nine months cure, tedious and imperfect, with conical, ulcerated, and tender dumps.—What indeed is the chief perfection of mo- dern furgery, or the excellency of our operations ? but that in bleedings from great veflels we trull nothing to compreflion, cauteries, or aftringertts, but tie our arteries firmly; and that we talk no longer about mundifying, incarning, or cicatrizing of wounds; that we never drefs the cut furfaces as diftinCt wounds, but put the fides or lips in clofe contact, and keep them fo. We boalt nothing of our own powers, but trull all to nature, whofe bufinefs it is, to make thofe furfaces ad- here which will adhere, or to re-unite by the flower procefs of fuppuration and granulation, the parts among which there has been a lofs of fubftance. Of thefe two great points, this of the fpontaneous adhefion of parts, is what I fliall firfl: explain. This do&rine of the adhefion of cut furfaces, and the in- ofculation of arteries, was but lately underftood ; and Very flowly and unwillingly received. Indeed the tales which were at firfl told of it, were fuch as might have difcredited the whole; for it happened with this mod important difcovery of adhefion, as with the no lefs certain and curious phenomenon of the regeneration of the humours of the eye, or as with the interelling experiment of the fafe and eafy transfufion of the blood, that the extravagance of its inventors ruined the invention, and took away all hopes of profiting by it. Burhius and Kirkringius pretended to be poflefled A j