Contributions to medical science / by Alexander Ogston, M.D.

  • Ogston, Alexander, Sir, 1844-1929.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to medical science / by Alexander Ogston, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    ON THE COMPARATIVE STRENGTH OF AR- TERIES SECURED BY THE METHODS OF LIGATURE. ACUPRESSURE, AND TORSION. preprinted from the Lancet for April 17,1869, and the New York Medical Gazette.) In the contest still being carried on between the rival merits of ligature, acupressure, and torsion, experimentation on the dead body—a method which, it must be admitted, is capable of exer- cising at least some weight in the solution of the question—has not yet been brought so prominently forward as it deserves. Some points which the advocates of the different systems are seeking otherwise to demonstrate can be solved with great accuracy by means of experiment; and while the whole subiect of the after-results of operations where each system has been employed is capable of being worked out only by clinical obser- vation, their absolute and relative values as means of arresting htemorrhage can by experiment be determined with very great certainty. Thus all it is requisite to know about an artery which has been submitted to the action of one of these haemo- statics, on purpose to judge of its power of controlling bleeding, is to be made aware of how much internal pressure a vessel so secured is able to resist. It is true that we cannot compare with absolute correctness the amount of resistance obtained with the force of the blood which in the living subject has to be resisted: before this could be indisputably accomplished, the amount of internal pressure exercised, under normal and abnormal con- ditions, by the blood, would have to be determined. Although this has not yet been done, something like a general idea of the force usually resisted by tlie wall of vessels can be formed ; and by comparing this with the resistance of the three forms of hsemostatics, and these again with each other, a fair appreciation of their absolute and relative values can be arrived at. The other conditions necessary for accurate experimentation are certainly present. A ligature can be applied as perfectly to a vessel removed from the body as to a living one; torsion can be as efficiently performed on the one as on the other ; and some at least of the forms of acupressure are equally applicable under both circumstances.