A text-book on surgery : general, operative, and mechanical / by John A. Wyeth.

Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A text-book on surgery : general, operative, and mechanical / by John A. Wyeth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    longer discolor clear water, immerse them in 1 to 600 sublimate for one hour. In all operations, sponges, before being used in the wound, should be dipped in 1 to 3,000 sublimate solution, and then squeezed as dry as possible. Drains.—Rubber tubing, Neuber's bone drains, and twists of catgut or Tiorse-hair, are chiefly to be relied upon in draining wounds. Rubber is most generally useful. The softest tubing should be selected, of vari- ous sizes, from that which has a lumen of one half-inch in diameter down to one sixteenth. Before it is inserted it should be bent over the finger, and with a pair of curved scissors clipped full of holes about a half-inch apart, as seen in Fig. 8. Rubber drains should be kept dry in clean jars, from which they are taken and placed in 1 to 20 carbolic acid solution when the operation for which they are needed is begun. When a wound is to be dressed only once—the permanent dressing—absorbable ani- mal drains should be inserted. For this purpose Neuber's bone tubes (Fig. 9) are preferable. They are made from the bones of young and healthy animals. The crude bone is cut of proper length and size, bored out, turned on a lathe round and smooth, and perforated laterally. Immersion in 33- per-cent muriatic acid for twelve hours com- pletely decalcifies them, after which they are kept (as recommended by the inventor) in 1 to 20 carbolic-acid solution, frequently re- newed. I prefer to keep them in alcohol, 95 per cent, or oil of juniper, which preserves them aseptic and hardens them, rendering a too rapid absorption less likely. The tubes are from three to five inches long. There are four sizes : the caliber of No. 1 is six, No. 2 is five, No. 3 is four, and No. 4 three millimetres in diameter (one millimetre is approximately ^ of an inch). The walls are from one to one and a half millimetre in thickness. These drains can be prepared readily from Fm. 8. Fm. 9. fig. 10. the bones of fowls by scraping the perios- teum off and the marrow out, soaking in muriatic acid (33-per-cent solu- tion) as above, and then in ether for a few hours before transferring them to the alcohol.^ Bone drains will be absorbed in from five to twenty days, and are excellent in permanent dressings. Catgut or horse-hair twists or skeins are at times employed for drain- ing small wounds, and are very satisfactory. The violin-strings are twisted into a bunch, as shown in Fig. 10, and laid in the wound at vari- * If the bones used are from fowls which have been cooked, Macewen recommends that the hydrochloric-acid solution should be one to five of water, and that the tube, when in- serted into the wound, should be threaded with horse-hair to prevent collapse from pressure, and to facilitate the removal of clots without taking out the tube and irritating the wound.
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