46 On Medical Science : [Jan., 
The same end—the prevention of suffering—-has also been 
attained in another way, to which some allusion has already been 
made, viz. the simplification of the modes of dressing the wounds 
caused by surgical operations. The improvement in this respect 
has been gradual. The cumbrous dressings and often torturing 
applications of our remote forefathers, the boiling pitch into which 
the amputated limb was plunged, or the heated iron by which the 
surface of the recent wound was seared, had long been banished 
from use; but the dressings were still too complicated, and the 
mode of closing the larger blood-vessels by ligature imevitably pre- 
vented the early healing of the wound, by leaving between the 
two surfaces foreign bodies, the ligature threads and particles of © 
dead and putrid matter, the extremities of the blood-vessels, detached 
by the pressure of the ligatures. The very recent discovery of 
acupressure—a discovery for which we are indebted to the illus- 
trious discoverer of chloroform—has to a very great extent removed 
both these obstacles to the speedy healing of surgical wounds. 
By needles of suitable size and length passed either through the 
external skin over the vessels to be closed, and again brought out 
through the skin, or applied in other ways which need not here be 
described, pressure is made on the arteries; the lips of the wound 
are then brought together by metallic sutures, an immense recent 
improvement, and further closure is effected by a few strips of 
isinglass plaster ; the limb is then placed m a suitable position, with 
due provision for its immobility, and, with the exception of the with- 
drawal of the needles after the lapse of a few hours, or at the most 
a day or two, and after a longer mterval the removal of the wire- 
sutures, the treatment is complete. Nature does all the rest. 
There is, say those who have extensively tested this mode of dressing, 
no sloughing, no suppuration, no absorption of pus, and consequent 
surgical fever; there are no painful dressings repeated daily for, 
perhaps, weeks. ‘To use the words of a speaker at the late annual 
meeting of the British Medical Association in Dublin, “ 1f surgeons 
are strangely apathetic as to the desirability of attaining such results, 
patients are not equally so. I was lately told by a medical friend 
of the case of a gentleman who had a tumour, some time ago, 
removed in Edinburgh, and who, after being operated upon, was 
weeks in getting well. After returning home, he happened to get 
hold of a book on acupressure, by Dr. Pirrie, and after reading it, 
angrily argued with his ordinary attendant, my informant: Why 
was I tortured for six weeks to please old surgical prejudices, when 
I might have been cured in a day or two?” 
The illustrations we have so far given of the recent improve- 
ments in the art of medicine have been drawn from one branch of 
it, that, viz. which deals with external diseases and injuries. But 
in the treatment of the ailments more especially coming under 
