160 _ Miscellanies. 
plication, that although the hands, and especially the face, were pro- 
digiously swelled, the eyelids tumefied and the nostrils obstructed, 
the wounds healed so perfectly, that not a trace was left of the ac- 
cident. 
So much for burns. A family of five persons were attacked with 
typhus, which reduced them to great extremity. They recovered, 
but one of them, a lad of twelve years of age, became a prey to 
enormous eschars, on all the parts of his body, which were obliged 
to sustain any pressure, or even a permanent contact ; that on the 
sacrum was at least six inches in diameter, those of the trochanters 
were the one five and the other four inches, and on each knee was 
one of two inches, with smaller ones on the feet. ‘The young man 
was reduced to the lowest degree of emaciation, and so great was 
the pain that his cries were almost incessant day and night for nearly 
amonth. After trying in vain the ordinary means, Dr. P. thought of 
carded cotton, and of this he applied a thick compress on each wound. 
On the first night after, the patient slept, the pains abated as if by 
enchantment, the application was continued, and in the month of 
February, the eschars, which had commenced in September prece- 
ding, were reduced to very small simple wounds, and the patient had 
regained his strength, notwithstanding the enormous suppuration. 
The precaution which was observed in this important cases and 
which Dr. P. considers indispensable to success, was never t0 change 
the compress of cotton, except when the amount of suppuration in- 
commoded the patient and almost entirely detached the mass 
dressing also, great care must be taken to cut with good scissors ® 
never to pull out the fibres of cotton which adhere to the borders of 
the wound. ae 
Such unexpected success induced the belief that every kind of 
wound or ulcer might be treated with decided advantage by 
carded cotton. An opportunity of trying it was soon presented: 
An unfortunate being, with an enormous cancer of the face; sate 
dressed with cotton, without experiencing from it the least 208 
The disease being in its nature incurable, Dr. P. did not pretend 1° 
heal it by this means, but he rendered the treatment of it far more 
supportable. : 
All kinds of wounds, simple and complicated, have been thus 
kindly and promptly healed. A wound of the head, complicated 
with much hemorrhage, was by the same means successfully treated: 
A prejudice exists that cotton is dangerous to the eyes, but VI 
