A portable sterilizer for private operations / by Willy Meyer.

  • Meyer, Willy, 1858-1932.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A portable sterilizer for private operations / by Willy Meyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    well as for the trays. They can thus be easily and well cleansed. They are simply rubbed off and wiped dry with a piece of gauze or a towel and need no special scrubbing.1 If so ordered, the apparatus can also be had of agate- or emaille iron, and of the so-called Ger- man silver, a combination of sixty per cent, copper, and twenty per cent, each of nickel and tin. However, the agate, also emaille, will in time come off the iron, which then cannot be cleansed so well, and the German silver made here is too thin. To have my sterilizer as light as possible and yet dura ble, I have tried my best to find here and in factories of the neighboring cities a combination of other metals with aluminium which would enable the latter to permanently stand the boiling soda solution. My efforts have so far been futile. Aluminium alone, though now used for all sorts of cooking utensils, is slowly dissolved by the boil- ing soda solution. A proper combination with other metals to make it more resistant has not yet been found. Most probably it will be found in the near future. Then of course the aluminium should be “ the ” material. The following points might with propriety be claimed as practical in my sterilizer : i. It has sufficient inside space to hold everything that is needed for “ the operation as such.” Instruments (best wrapped up in a piece of gauze or a towel), dress- ings, etc., all can be easily put into the sterilizer at home and the latter then carried along with the help of this cover of gray canvas with a leather handle, as a doctor’s satchel. It would be absurd to call a “ portaole ” sterilizer only then prac- tical, if it is large enough to receive “everything” that we should like to sterilize for an operation. It is and must be sufficient if the apparatus permits of sterilizing at the patient’s home, right before the operation, all that material which will come in direct contact with the wound and its immediate surroundings. The linen aprons or coats for the operator and his assistants will naturally never find 1 Tin will not hold nickel-plating for any length of time. If not nickel-plated, it rusts. Copper needs polishing.