INTRODUCTION 15 



cart or a gig shaft — the neighbouring tissues are so much damaged 

 (the bloodvessels being destroyed and nerve fibres shattered) that the 

 part is very liable to mortification, owing to the inflammation set 

 up being generally so intense. Our object, and greatest endeavour, 

 should be to keep the inflammation in check, and to give tone to the 

 neighbouring parts, and to assist them to throw off the damaged and 

 dead portions. The best treatment I have found is to plug or cover 

 the external wound with antiseptic dressings, so as to exclude the 

 air, combined with a continuous application of blankets, six or eight 

 ply thick, wrung out of cold water every four or five hours, or when 

 they become hot and dry, until a fine, thick, yellowish-white matter 

 is seen coming from the wound, which generally takes place in from 

 forty-eight to sixty hours. In my opinion, the cold water application 

 seems to extract, and keep in check, the excessive heat usually 

 present ; in fact, a sort of endosmotic and exosmotic current is set 

 up ; the cold from the wet blanket passing into the part of the body, 

 as it were, to which it is applied, the heat being extracted from the 

 part to the blanket, which becomes hot ; the action equalizing the 

 temperature, and giving tone to the undamaged tissues, at the same 

 time assisting Nature in her physiological efforts, and also the 

 pathological action to throw off the damaged or dead portions. Hot 

 applications, to be of any good, must be continuous. They are 

 generally badly applied, and, in my opinion, relax the tissues, and 

 favour the process of gangrene. 



34. Septicaemia, the contamination of the blood with septic 

 organisms generated in an external wound or injury, which pass 

 into the blood-stream and induce blood-poisoning. When the part 

 dies, and is not thrown off by sloughing, the surrounding tissues 

 swell and have a bladder-like sound, as found in gangrene of the 

 udder in cows and sheep ; at times seen also in the latter stages of 

 milk fever, in the hind quarters of a cow, and from an injury with 

 an external wound, when it is accompanied with a dirty brownish, 

 foetid, watery discharge. There are rigors and tremblings of the 

 body ; pulse small and quick ; respiration hurried , cold, clammy 

 patches of perspiration all over the body, with head hanging down. 

 We may then rest assured that the case is hopeless, septicaemia, or 



