VULNERARIES ' 



By DOUGLAS H. STEWART, M.D., New York 



The days before antisepsis, treatment of wounds, so 

 far as dressing was concerned, made its demands upon 

 the patient's own healing powers, which were to be aided 

 b}^ vulneraries. Then came the Pasteur-Lister methods, 

 which aided the patient not at all, considered the wound- 

 healing application of small account, but did interpose a 

 shield between the patient and extraneous infection. 

 About the year 1895 there appeared the experimental 

 work of some German surgeons, who claimed that the 

 use of antiseptics in infected wounds was of no benefit. 

 For centuries there had been in use a plant known as 

 bruisewort. Modern men were experimenting with pla- 

 cental membranes. Now the consensus of opinion is that 

 wounds require both the shield of the dressing and the 

 reinforcement of the patient's bactericidal products. 



The value of the vulnerary begins where the surgeon 

 leaves off, and bruisewort, or comfrey, had been more 

 or less in use for ages. Nor can any one who has had 

 experience with this plant be persuaded that it does not 

 possess tissue-building powers. Neither is it strange that 

 those powers should be sought for in embryotic tissues, 

 because the active principle of placental membranes as 

 well as of Symphytum officinale (that is, comfrey) is 

 allantoin. German literature treats approvingly of that 

 plant as a wound-healer, and personal experiment con- 

 firms the good results claimed therein. The Americans 

 claim that comfrey will cause the disa])pearance of sar- 



iltoprinted from The Ai7icrican Journal of Clinical Medicine. 



149 



