A Text Book of War Nursing - Violetta Thurstan

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ...short space of time The pendulum had swung round again, and antiseptic surgery was once more the order of the day. Various antiseptics had been tried with varying degreesjof success, besides the old familiar friends such as carbolic, perchloride of mercury, iodoform peroxide of hydrogen and the like, newer treatments such as a new preparation of picric acid, quinine lotion, and (in France) powdered sugar, were experimented with, but none proved entirely satisfactory. An antiseptic which will destroy harmful germs is easy enough to find, the trouble is that most of them also irritate and destroy the body tissue with which they come into contact. Some antiseptics--carbolic for instance, and its preparations--are poisonous, and if applied to the surface of very large wounds would be absorbed into the system, and in extreme cases cause death by carbolic poisoning. The discovery of two new groups of antiseptics revolutionised the treatment of septic wounds: (1) the aniline series of which Flavine is the final word, and (2) the use of hypochlorous acid, either by the Carrel system of irrigation with Dakin's fluid, extensively used in France, or in the form of Eusol as used in England. The Bland Sutton Institute of Pathology working at the Middlesex Hospital has discovered Flavine. An American scientist, Dr. Dakin, evolved the fluid which bears his name, an ideal antiseptic which renders a wound sterile without destroying the body tissue, and a Frenchman, Dr. Carrel, has taught the practical method of applying it. These two discoveries form the point"of departure for an entirely new essay in surgery. The surgeon, now no longer tortured by the fear of wound infection and becoming more and more confident and perfect in his technique, begins...