Directions for the medicine chest / prepared by Lewis Heermann.

  • Lewis Heermann
Date:
1811
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Directions for the medicine chest / prepared by Lewis Heermann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    instrument. They should be rinsed and washed clean; and theif edges, when drawn together, be retained by slips of No 29 ; a bit of lint laid over them, and confined with a bandage. With this dress* Jng, if toierably easy, the wound should be left undisturbed for 4 or 5 days, and when on opening it, it looks partly healed, and is not much inflamed, the dressings are to be renewed in the same way ; but if the parts are inflamed, highly painful, separated, and soaked in mat- ter, No 29 should be exchanged for warm poultices ; and the cure perfected by ointments. When an artery has been wounded, it is known from a spouting of the blood, which alternately is thrown to a greater or a less distance- [See No. 44.3 The effusion of blood from a small artery is often stopped by the coagulated and clotted blood that lies over it: and in this case it would not be prudent in gentlemen not medical, to remove it by washing out the blood. Besides securing a blood-vessel, by passing a double or treble waxed thread around it, and tying it; 2nd which could not be easily accomplished but by a surgeon, it is ad- vised to make pressure upon the bleeding part by layers of lint and a bandage : and-if this alone proves ineffectual, to strew and fill up the wound with common flour, and then by lint and bandage to confine it, until surgical assistance can be obtained. [See also No. 11 & No- 15.]] In wounds, that are bruised or torn, in punctured and in gun-shot wounds, much inflammation must be expected ; and blood-letting, therefore, low diet, and frequent applications of warm poultices, are required until matter has been formed in them, when they may be dressed with common ointments. If in gun-shot wounds the bullet Can be felt immediately underneath the skin, it might without danger be cut upon by almost any person ; but if otherwise, it should be left entirely undisturbed. A punctured wound in the sole of the foot by a nail, f. i. or any other pointed weapon, is to be dressed with spirits of turpentine, un- less it is very painful, when it should be poulticed. The infliction of a wound into the lungs is known from a discharge of frothy blood by the mouth, brought up by hawking, and from a difficulty of breathing that attends it. Immediate and repeated blood- lettings are in no instance more requisite, than in a case of this kind ; and the external wound, if bleeding freely, ought by no means to be plugged up, and the escape of blood from it outwardly prevented; If a cut has penetrated into the belly, and any of the intestines pro- trude by it, they should, after having been rinsed clean with hike, warm water, be redir ie belly, and be prevented.from falling out again by uniting the ind. Bleeding, low diet, gentle purga- tives, and clysters, form the treatment.