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various methods of stanching hemorrhage in surgical wounds and 
operations which the Greek, Roman, Arabic, and Medieval surgeons 
employed, he gave a short history of the introduction of the ligature 
of arteries, and spoke of it as — with the occasional exception of 
torsion for the smallest arteries — the hemostatic means almost uni- 
versally employed in chirurgical practice at the present day* But 
he thought that surgery must advance forward a step farther than 
the ligature of arteries, particularly if surgeons expected — as seemed 
to be their unanimous desire — to close their operative wounds by the 
immediate union or primary adhesion of their sides or walls. 
All the march of modern surgery has been in the direction of 
attempting to increase the chances of the union of surgical wounds 
by the first intention, by diminishing more and more the irritation 
derived from the presence and action of the ligatures supposed to be 
inevitably required for the arrestment of the haemorrhage. By the 
new haemostatic process of acupressure, Dr Simpson hopes to over- 
come in a great degree all those difficulties, as by it he expected to 
arrest the haemorrhage attendant upon surgical wounds without leav- 
ing permanently any foreign body whatever in the wound itself. It 
was an attempt to bring bleeding wounds, in common surgery, to the 
condition of wounds in plastic surgery , where no arterial ligatures 
were used, and where union by the first intention was in consequence 
the rule, and not the exception to it. 
Dr Simpson stated that he had tested, with perfect success, the 
effects of acupressure as a means of effectually closing arteries and 
stanching haemorrhage, first upon the lower animals, and lately in 
two or three operations on the human subject. The instruments 
which he proposed should be used for the purpose were very 
sharp-pointed slender needles or pins of passive or non-oxidizable 
iron, headed with wax or glass, and in other respects also like the 
hare-lip needles commonly used by surgeons at the present day, but 
longer when circumstances required. They might be coated with silver 
or zinc on the surface, if such protection were deemed requisite. 
That needles used for the purpose of acupressure, and passed 
freely through the walls and flaps of wounds, will not be attended by 
any great degree of disturbance or irritation, is rendered in the 
highest degree probable by all that we know of the tolerance of living 
animal tissues to the contact of metallic bodies. Long ago John 
Hunter pointed out that small- shot, needles, pins, &c., when passed 
