A manual of minor surgery and bandaging for the use of house surgeons, dressers and junior practitioners.

  • Christopher Heath
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of minor surgery and bandaging for the use of house surgeons, dressers and junior practitioners. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    HiEMORRHAOE, after other operations is often more troublesome to treat than after amputation; for example, in re- section of tlie knee-joint, an oozing may take place, but as no large vessel has been divided, and perfect rest is essential for the success of the operation, a house-surgeon should avoid opening up the wound and displacing the bones to look for a small vessel, which pressure and time would probably treat more satisfactorily. The same may be said of compound fractures, &c. UcBinorrhaffe after incisions into injlamcd farts.— Incisions will often bleed profusely after a warm poultice is applied, as is the general custom in cases of erysipelas, carbuncle, &c., and the patient may lose more blood than is either necessary or advisable. The Avarm poultice must be immediately taken off and the clotted blood removed, after which strips of lint should be laid in each incision, so as to fill it to the surface, and a pad of lint be placed over all; a band- age should then be lightly applied, and the limb, if possible, kept in an elevated posture. In three or four hours the bandage and pad may be safely re- moved, and the poultice re-applied over the strips of lint, whicb should be allowed to remain undisturbed until loosened by suppuration. Secondary li(Emorrliac]e may occur in any womid when a ligature comes away, from the vessel not hav- ing become occluded, or it may result from sloughing having opened up vessels not previously implicated. Another and more formidable variety is where liga- ture of an arterial trunk has been pei'formeJ, and haemorrhage occurs at the time when, or soon after, the ligature comes away. Immediate arrest of the haemorrliage by pressure upon the main artery is of course the first object, and then, should the surfaces of the wound or stump be only partially iinited, an eifort may be made to place a bgature upon the bleed-