314 AN ADDRESS ON A NEW ANTISEPTIC DRESSING 



and corpuscles permanent^ free from putrefaction. It ma}^ be said that the 

 absence of putrefactive odour is but a rude test. There may be organisms 

 developed without any putrefactive odour being present ; that is perfectly 

 true. At the same time, if in a given experiment we find that with one agent 

 putrefaction occurs within twenty-four hours with i-40oth part, while with 

 another salt there is no putrefactive odour after the lapse of weeks with i-i, 200th 

 part, we have pretty conclusive evidence that, so far as the mixture of corpuscles 

 and serum is concerned, you have a more efficacious antiseptic in the latter. 

 I therefore proceeded to prepare dressings of this new substance, diffusing it — 

 for it is an exceedingly fine powder — in water with a little glycerine added to 

 fix it, to prevent it from dusting out. If you simply diffuse it in water, and 

 pass gauze through it, with nothing more than the water, the result is that you 

 have gauze which, with the slightest touch, gives out the double cyanide in a 

 cloud of dust, which produces not only inefficacy of your dressing by loss of 

 the proper proportion of the substance, but becomes in the highest degree 

 irritating to the nostrils of those who are near. A little glycerine, however, 

 prevented the double cyanide from thus dusting out. I proceeded to try it in 

 practice. I confess I did not dare to use it — considering its very slight solubility 

 in serum — unmixed, and I associated with it some of the very soluble cyanide 

 of mercury ; and with this cyanide gauze we tried various experiments in the 

 way of dressing, and got some admirable results. But then, on the other hand, 

 there were disappointments. We found, for one thing, now and then very 

 troublesome pustules as the result of a peculiar kind of irritation. Another 

 disadvantage was that occasionally we got suppurations, coming on at a late 

 period in the case, such as we had never been accustomed to with our carbolic 

 dressings. A case might go on perfectly well for, say, ten days, and then 

 suppuration might occur about a stitch track and spread perhaps further ; 

 and sometimes the healing of cases was greatly protracted by this late suppura- 

 tion. In consequence of these two circumstances I gave up the use for the 

 time being of this material. 



I then directed my attention to biniodide of mercury, which has been 

 highly spoken of for its antiseptic powers, and which has the advantage over 

 alembroth of being comparatively little soluble either in water or in serum. 

 I found that the iodide-of-mercury gauze answered our purpose very well so far as 

 its antiseptic properties were concerned, but that it had the great disadvantage 

 of producing irritation, which it was extremely difficult to control. In order 

 to control it, we interposed between the iodide-of-mercury gauze and the skin 

 unprepared gauze, except in so far as it was steeped in a weak solution of 

 bichloride of mercury (i to 4,000) . But we found that different skins differed 



