A system of practical surgery / by William Fergusson.

  • William Fergusson
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of practical surgery / by William Fergusson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    62/878 (page 38)
    Utility, all of them being modifications of the instruments used by Amussat, in torsion of the arteries,—a method of arresting hemorrhage which, though it has been much practised on the Continent, has never Fig. 41. yet received the sanction of English surgery, and which seems to me to possess such trifling advantages over the ligature, as to induce me still to prefer the latter. The hook-like point of the forceps, as shown in figure 40, is admirably fitted to seize and hold firm any object, such as an artery, and I have found these forceps, either with or without the catch, of invaluable service in removing small tumours from the neck, axilla, and other such parts, where it is desirable to d™wthe swelling well out, before using the knife to divide the textures behind It will be observed that these forceps, and the common ones referred to previously, are narrow and slender at the point. This occasional y wives rise to inconvenience during the application of ligatures, for the noose is sometimes tied round the point of the blades instead of the artery. To obviate this annoyance, an old-fashioned shape of forceps has been revived again by some. The blades are kept about half-an- inch broad, until nearly a similar length from the end, when thej rapidly diminish to a point, like that on the ordinary instruments. Such a shape gives a clumsy appearance, but this has in some degree been obviated, as is here represented (fig. 42), in an instrument con- Fig. 42. * structed by Mr. Coxeter, of University-street. When an artery is seized with such blades, the noose which is made on the ligature must slip over the point as it is tightly drawn, and so the incon- venience often felt with the other blades is done away with. But it sometimes happens that the vessels cannot be readily go hold of with the forceps, or cannot be drawn out of their sheaths, so