COMPOUND FRACTURE, ABSCESS, ETC. 5 



lating sore. At the expiration of six weeks I examined the condition of the 

 bones, and, finding them firmly united, discarded the sphnts ; and two days 

 later the sore was entirely healed, so that the cure could not be said to have been 

 at all retarded by the circumstance of the fracture being compound. 



This, no doubt, was a favourable case, and might have done well under 

 ordinary treatment. But the remarkable retardation of suppuration, and the 

 immediate conversion of the compound fracture into a simple fracture with 

 a superficial sore, were most encouraging facts. 



Case 2. — Patrick F , a healthy labourer, aged thirty-two, had his right 



tibia broken on the afternoon of the nth of September, 1865, by a horse kicking 

 him with its full force over the anterior edge of the bone about its middle. He 

 was at once taken to the infirmary, where Mr. Miller, the house surgeon in 

 charge, found a wound measuring about an inch by a quarter of an inch, from 

 which blood was welling profusely. 



He put up the fracture in pasteboard splints, leaving the wound exposed 

 between their anterior edges, and dressing it with a piece of lint dipped in 

 carbolic acid, large enough to overlap the sound skin about a quarter of an 

 inch in every direction. In the evening he changed the lint for another piece, 

 also dipped in carbolic acid, and covered this with oiled paper. ^ I saw the 

 patient next day, and advised the daily application of a bit of lint soaked in 

 carbolic acid over the oiled paper ; and this was done for the next five days. 

 On the second day there was an oozing of red fluid from beneath the dressing, 

 but by the third day this had ceased entirely. On the fourth day, when, under 

 ordinary circumstances, suppuration would have made its appearance, the skin 

 had a nearly natural aspect, and there was no increase of swelling, while the 

 uneasiness he had previously felt was almost entirely absent. His pulse was 64, 

 and his appetite improving. On the seventh day, though his general condition 

 was all that could be wished, he complained again of some uneasiness, and the 

 skin about the still adherent crust of blood, carbolic acid, and lint was found 

 to be vesicated, apparently in consequence of the irritation of the carbolic acid. 

 From the seventh day the crust was left untouched till the eleventh day, when 

 I removed it, disclosing a concave surface destitute of granulations, and free 

 from suppuration. Water dressing was now applied, and by the sixteenth day 

 the entire sore, with the exception of one small spot where the bone was bare, 

 presented a healthy granulating aspect, the formation of pus being limited to 

 the surface of the granulations. 



I now had occasion to leave Glasgow for some weeks, and did so feeling 



* A cheap substitute for oiled silk, devised by the late Dr. M'Ghee, of the Glasgow Inlinnar)% and 

 very useful for covering poultices, &c. 



