Under the red crescent : being surgical experiences and observations as an ambulance surgeon in Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 / by Robert Pinkerton.

Pinkerton, Robert, M.B.

Date:: 1879

Credit: Under the red crescent : being surgical experiences and observations as an ambulance surgeon in Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 / by Robert Pinkerton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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$o; 7 1 . ♦ . . Tj^g experience of Dr. Vlathos, of ( .y ill favour of the operation for in the case of children. The case I mention here was the ninth of a series of succe.ssful cases. In nearly all these cases, the wound healed by first intention, and the urine came away by the urethra- from the first, without r- :;• ' - t , a cathet' e l in all of them the ]>atient \v.as _ . ly much r than he could otherwise have done had he been treated by the lateral method. Again, in case which I have dej^crilnid, the extraction of the stone, <ed in a deep and fleshy cyst, was • .\ . \. iiirh, I am sure, by the lateral or any other 1. 1 have Wen not only dithcult but impossible. I wa.s much ini] 1 by this operation, and the more I have studied the subject and its literature, the less am I able to ' ' ! • 'id why an o| ii, with a history so successful and i iic.iii: ti ' t^iat < ! iiir suprapubic operation for stone— on«' \ I'> J.> i form, with so little risk attcndin;^ it, ('ithor of > ! to the patient or of failure on the surgeon's part, an operation, moreover, from which the recovery is generally so rapid and complete—should be so entirely ignored by modern ns. 1 M-ive already incidentally referred to the loathsome presence of mncjnt'' in the wounds of soldiers during the not weather ! rtunat^-ly we found the ordinary strength (1 to 40) of carbolic acid solution, which wc used for dressing ^ wounds, a perfect protection from this pln.i^'uo. When we ' n (me of a deep woimd filled with maggots, and where t , y i l l likely burrowed, our usual plan was to inject a 1 t^ 20 solution of carbolic acid, which effectually killed them, and allowed of our picking them out of the wound. After cleansing out the wound thoroughly, we dressed it with lint or aked in the weaker (\ to 40) solution, which wc fnM- . I via complete nfr Minrd from the attacks of the Hi---. Mr. Longmore, in ^ _ on this point, says that the weak solutions of 1 part in 100, such as are usually employed in direct dressings, are of no avail in warding oflf flies. This I can easily believe, but I certainly never saw such weak c employed in direct dressings, having always u.sed - .1 one of, at least, the strength of 1 part in 40. I have already mentioned as a most useful instrument Dr. Foul is' improved elastic tourniquet. But when I speak of it in this way, I do so simply in connection with its employment by a surgeon at an operation, where it is u.sed under profes- sional direction, and where the time it is allowed to constrict$