AS A SURGICAL DRESSING 305 



no corrosive sublimate can fly off. It can be manipulated as you please, and, 

 as applied dry to the skin, it is absolutely unirritating.^ Then, in the next 

 place, it is unirritating as acted on by the perspiration. If water is made to 

 act on sublimated serum dried, it does not redissolve it as serum does, but it 

 renders the mass opaque, the water being only partly absorbed into it ; and 

 the water which remains unabsorbed contains exceedingly little of the corrosive 

 sublimate, which is almost all retained by the albumen. Hence, when per- 

 spiration soaks into such a dressing, though it moistens it, it does not produce 

 irritation. I made some gauze with serum so strong with corrosive sublimate 

 as to have i part to 30, which implies more than 6 per cent, of corrosive sublimate 

 in the dried gauze. I moistened a piece of this with distilled water, and fixed 

 it on my arm for six hours in the manner above described ; and, when I removed 

 it, I found the skin free from irritation. Thus, you will observe that, by asso- 

 ciating albumen with the corrosive sublimate, we seem to be able to get rid 

 of its irritating properties. 



But the important question arises. Does corrosive sublimate, when thus 

 associated with albumen, retain sufficient antiseptic virtue for surgical purposes ? 

 The method of experimenting which I have described is adapted for testing 

 the efficacy of any antiseptic dressing, and I have used it for various others 

 besides sublimated ones. I have employed it for salicylic cotton-wool, for 

 iodoform cotton-wool, for eucalyptus gauze, and for carbolic gauze. I have 

 mentioned that the test is an exceedingly severe one, and I find that, after 

 the lapse of a few weeks, salicylic wool soaked with serum and inoculated as 

 above described, stinks ; and the same is the case with iodoform wool. The 

 eucalyptus gauze, however, if freshly prepared, remains pure ; as also does 

 carbolic gauze. We have seen that the i per cent, sublimate- wool resisted, 

 still more the 5 per cent, and the 10 per cent. In accordance, therefore, with 

 our previous experiments with iodoform and salicylic acid, they did not stand 

 the test as well as carbolic acid, or eucalyptus, or the corrosive sublimate. But 

 we get a different result if, instead of using serum of blood, we use serum mixed 

 with blood-corpuscles, such as we readily get from the cow, in which the 

 corpuscles do not aggregate so closely as in the horse, but remain suspended ni 

 the serum. I need not, of course, tell any members of this Society, tliat the 

 corpuscles are enormously richer in jirotein substances than the serum is. so 

 that serum and corpuscles contain about 2^ times as much of ]n-oteid material 

 as the serum does ; and as albuminous materials mitigate the action of the 

 corrosive sublimate, they cannot fail to interfere more or less. also, with its 



* If such a gauze be torn, it gives off a dust which initatos the nostrils. It is, thorciorc. better 

 to cut it with scissors. 



