304 AN ADDRESS ON CORROSIVE SUBLIMATE 



abscess, I applied gauze containing 5 per cent, of corrosive sublimate, with 

 a little gum arable to prevent the crystals flying off. On changing the dressing 

 the following day, I saw in the vicinity of the wound all perfectly satisfactory ; 

 but, the discharge having gone principally backwards, I found that the further 

 I looked towards the sacrum the more and more evidence of irritation did I find, 

 until over the sacrum itself, beyond the edge of the dressing, there was absolutely 

 a large vesicle. How was that to be explained ? The explanation I believe 

 to be simply this. If an albuminous discharge travels through a dressing con- 

 taining corrosive sublimate only, it, in the first instance, forms, with the corrosive 

 sublimate, a non-irritating albuminate, so to speak, but leaves more or less of 

 its albumen behind in the form of a precipitate. As it goes further, and meets 

 with more corrosive sublimate, it leaves more albumen behind, and so, as it 

 advances, becomes more and more nearly a watery solution of corrosive sublimate, 

 producing the highly irritating effects with which we are familiar. This result, 

 I confess, made me at first despair of using corrosive sublimate in anything like 

 a concentrated form as a surgical dressing. But it afterwards occurred to me, 

 might it not be possible, as corrosive sublimate associated with albumen is so 

 little irritating, to associate albumen with the corrosive sublimate in the dressing ? 

 Where should we get our albumen from ? Well, we may get it from horse's 

 blood. There are in every town horse-slaughterers. If you stir horse's blood 

 while it is coagulating, you may get from one animal some gallons in the form 

 of serum. There is the albumen for you, if only it can be made useful. There 

 is a horse-slaughterer in the north of London who will let us have this serum 

 absolutely for nothing ; it is simply a useless material to him. This being so, 

 I ascertained in what proportions the serum and the sublimate might be mixed, 

 so as to give a workable article ; and I find that you may employ them in almost 

 any proportions. If you use a very small amount of serum, you get, indeed, 

 a thick opaque substance ; but this can be perfectly well blended with gauze 

 or other materials. Here is a gauze which has been charged with serum con- 

 taining one part of corrosive sublimate to seventy-five. Two and a half parts 

 of the liquid are required for charging one part of the gauze ; and you will see 

 that this is not at all an unpleasantly constituted substance, physically. It is 

 destitute of odour ; you will scarcely perceive it to the taste ; and you would 

 hardly believe that it contained nearly three parts per cent, of corrosive 

 sublimate. 



The corrosive sublimate is so intimately blended with the serum that, 

 when it dries (as seen on this plate of glass), no separation of crystals takes 

 place. Whether we use i to 100, i to 70, i to 50, or even i to 30 parts of blood- 

 serum, they are perfectly amalgamated, and therefore, from a gauze like that, 



\ 



