What we observed during a visit to the seat of war in 1870 / by Charles Orton and William Dunnett Spanton.

  • Orton, Charles.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What we observed during a visit to the seat of war in 1870 / by Charles Orton and William Dunnett Spanton. 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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    surgeons only extract when the operation can be readily performed. Chloroform was given in all the operations of im- portance at the Anglo-American Hospital. This was also the case at the French ambulance at Sedan. The mode of dressing wounds and stumps was to use at first Lister’s plaster, or simple wet lint; then, as a subsequent dressing, after washing out the wound with lotion of carbolic acid of variable strength, according to the nature of the case, to place over it a piece of wetted lint, and on that some oakum. At first, ordi- nary water dressing with lint and oil-silk, or gutta percha, or a simple poultice, was used; but the stench became intolerable. Under the use of oakum the wounds progressed more favourably, and the atmo- sphere of the ward is greatly improved. In a case of compound fracture of the thigh two long side-splints were employed with good effect, enabling the limb to be more readily moved without pain. The diet was liberal in the extreme, meat being given twice a day in good quantity, soup also twice, and coffee and stimu- lants freely. Smoking was in this, as in all the other ambulances we saw, not only permitted, but encou- raged. From the eager desire the poor fellows so uniformly manifested for tobacco, we could come to no other conclusion than this—that it has an undoubted power in soothing the nervous system, and in this way is of invaluable service after the excitement of a battle, and perhaps even more so in those cases where defeat
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