Menu
1
150
300
450
600
750

Essays and addresses

With a belief not dead till Lister killed it, and in full vigor in my day as a medical student, that pus was a good thing in itself, so long as it was "laud- able pus" and not too abundant, the faculty of the seventeenth century used every effort to bring it forth and many times, indeed, thought it sufficient to cure the wound if the surgeon had the skill or good fortune to excite a sufficient quantity of this laudable which some therefore called also healthy and benign pus ; so the surgeons applied a "digest- ive.

" But they were not content to rely upon the pus-exciting medicament alone, but often applied a most celebrated vulnerary balsam which was ap- proved by Paulus Barbette, an acknowledged master of the art of surgery and this balsam was com- posed of many ingredients, turpentine, gum galbani, gum elemi and hederae, frankincense, gum mastich, myrrh, aloes, galingal, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cubebs.

And this ointment was considered both "digestive, sarcotic, and epulotic" for the turpen- tine, gum elemi, frankincense, and mastich are digestive, the gum galbani, gum elemi, myrrh, aloes, cloves, and nutmeg were thought sarcotic, and aloes, myrrh, and mastich to be also epulotic.

This foul mess applied to the wound, the surgeons firmly believed had much virtue ; but the result of such an application can be contemplated only with a shudder by one trained in the ultracleanly methods of modern surgery.

In Digby s method there was no topical application to the wound; all that was done to it, was to wash it carefully from time to time with fair clean water, cover it with a clean, soft linen cloth, and cleanse it once a day from pus and other impurities the purer the water, the cleaner the cloth, the better.