Principles and practice of surgery

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1848 Excerpt: ...of the limb, finally affect the system in the same manner as has been just described. We distinguish the cases of simple irritative and diffused inflammation of the cellular tissue and lymphatics, from those complicated with morbid contamination, chiefly by the absence in the former of remote symptoms of development, and of a less rapid decline into an alarming state of prostration. The condition of the system in the former class of cases is that of common irritative fever, while that of the latter is more analogous to malignant typhus fever of the putrid type. There is no occasion for dilating at present upon the diffused inflammations of the cellular tissue, resulting from punctures in irritable subjects. Such have already been explained under the head Three of my private pupils were affected by dissection wounds in one winter. They all occurred in the latter part of February. Two of them were injured by the spicula of the ribs, which they had partly broken asunder in laying open the posterior portion of the thorax, in a consumptive subject. They both exhibited all the signs of contamination of the blood from absorption of the septic poison, and were in a very dangerous state of typhoid prostration for weeks before they recovered. Although they had repeated swellings and infiltrating suppurations along the course of the affected limbs, the punctured parts did not especially suffer. The other case, which occurred in the person of Dr. Byington, now of John son sburg, New Jersey, was the result of irritative inflammation of the cellular tissue--and the organization and use of the affected finger were permanently destroyed by the violence of the local inflammation. of consensual or symptomatic erysipelas of the skin lying over the parts affected with travelin...