Remarks on a case of compound dislocation of the ankle with other injuries : illustrating the antiseptic system of treatment / by Joseph Lister.

  • Joseph Lister
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on a case of compound dislocation of the ankle with other injuries : illustrating the antiseptic system of treatment / by Joseph Lister. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be itself antiseptic at the moment of its application, otherwise there would be a risk of its communicating septic particles. This object can be attained by covering it with an extremely thin film of some material soluble in water ; so that when dipped into a watery solution of the acid it may be uniformly moistened with the anti¬ septic, but in so small a quantity as will be rapidly absorbed by the wound and by the skin, so as not to interfere to any material extent with the purely protec¬ tive office of the application. You will bear in mind that the protective is not designed to have any persis¬ tent antiseptic virtue ; and that, like the wound at the first dressing, it must be freely overlapped at every point by the antiseptic plaster. These principles will be found to apply whatever be the materials used for carrying out the antiseptic system. An antiseptic to exclude putrefaction, with a protective to exclude the antiseptic, will by their joint action keep the wound free from abnormal stimulus. Though we have not yet got a perfect protective, that which we are now generally using answers very fairly, and has this advantage—that the materials for it can be obtained from any druggists shop. The basis of it is the common oiled silk. I am indebted to my late house- surgeon, Dr. Joseph Coats, now Pathologist to the Glas¬ gow Royal Infirmary, for calling my attention to the fact that carbolic acid does not pass nearly so readily through oiled silk as through gutta-percha. But if oiled silk is dipped into a carbolic lotion before applying it, the watery fluid runs from the surface as from a duck’s back, and there is risk of septic particles being deposited a 3
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