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AN ADDRESS ON A NEW ANTISEPTIC DRESSING 



to the double cyanide of mercury and zinc. Looking back to my notes, I found 

 such evidence of its superior antiseptic properties that I felt that we had deserted 

 this material too readily. In the interval we had had other experience of 

 importance with the alembroth gauze. Occasional late suppurations had at 

 first occurred under its use, just as was the case with the double-cyanide gauze. 

 These, however, had ceased to trouble us after my attention had been directed 

 to the expediency of always using mercurial dressings in a moist condition. 

 If they are used dry, the mercurial salt having no volatility, and having no 

 power, therefore, of destroying any micro-organism in contact with it, whether 

 derived from the manufactory or elsewhere, there could be no security that the 

 dressing when applied was free from living organisms. This important object 

 could, however, be infallibly attained if the dressing were used moist with an 

 efficient germicidal solution. I put this idea into practice, and during the two 

 years that have since elapsed we have never on any single occasion had to com- 

 plain of these late suppurations. Might not the same immunity attend our 

 cyanide gauze if we adopted with it the same expedient ? 



The other objection to this double-cyanide gauze had been the irritation 

 which it occasioned. Might not this have been due to the simple cyanide, which, 

 as I have said, I used along with the double cyanide ? The simple cyanide is 

 highly irritating, and just as with the sal alembroth, being freely soluble, it 

 can be taken up by successive portions of discharge, and, when the discharge 

 is free, may come to be in so strong a solution as to irritate. On the other hand, 

 experiments on my own person had shown that the powder of the double cyanide 

 might be kept applied to the skin for an indefinite time, whether moistened 

 with water or with blood, without occasioning any irritation whatever. If 

 this was really the explanation, and if, as our experiments seemed to indicate, 

 the double cyanide could be trusted of itself, we might easily get rid of all 

 irritation by using a double-cyanide dressing moistened with a weak solution of 

 bichloride, say, i to 4,000, which, while it is securely germicidal, can never 

 irritate. But here arose a new difficulty. I have told you that when we tried 

 this double cyanide in a gauze at first, in order to prevent the dusting out, 

 with its great inconveniences, we used glycerine ; but if we were to moisten 

 the gauze with i to 4,000 solution of corrosive sublimate, we should run great 

 risk of washing out the glycerine, and then the double cyanide would be free 

 to dust out on drying. And, besides that, it must be admitted that the glycerine 

 arrangement was not a good one, independently of that consideration, inasmuch 

 as when the discharges flowed into the gauze they would wash away the glycerine, 

 and then the double cyanide might be washed out also, and so fail in one of the 

 most important requisites of an efficient antiseptic dressing — the storage of the 



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