HISTORY OF ANTISEPTIC SURGERY 371 



tion, this was certainly very remarkable. The hair must thus have become 

 charged with about a sixtli of its weight of the antiseptic ^ ; and if a larger 

 quantity of the lotion had been used, the proportion would have been still 

 greater.' - 



^ ■ Hair thus highly charged with carbohc acid by washing with five per cent, solution, may some- 

 times be turned to account in surgery of the scalp as an effective and unirritating antiseptic dressing. 

 This may be illustrated by one of Lord Lister's latest cases. The patient was a lady with numerous 

 atheromatous tumours scattered over the scalp. To have shaved around each of these would have 

 caused a very inconvenient loss of hair ; but this was avoided by washing freely with the lotion about 

 each tumour, and simply passing a comb along the line where the incision was to run, the hair being 

 replaced in position after the removal of the cyst. The several tumours having been so dealt with, 

 a cap of folded cyanide gauze was bandaged over the head, and when this was removed some days 

 later, all the wounds were found to be healed.' 



* On the Evolution of W ound-treatment during the last Forty Years, p. 7 1 , and British Medical Journal, 

 April 6, 1907, p. 799. 



