11/27/2023 0 Comments Beginning of asepsis yearEdmonson (1899 reprint ed., San Francisco: Norman Publishing, 1988). From Charles Truax’s The Mechanics of Surgery, ed. Scissors and forceps are made so that the two parts may be readily separated and joined again. Knives and retractors are made of one piece of steel, all niches and crevices being avoided wherever possible. The modern surgical instruments are made as plain and smooth as possible. Jim quotes a Chicago surgeon, Nicholas Senn, in 1902:Īll attempts at ornamentation have been abandoned. Thus metal soon replaced the wooden and ivory handles of surgical instruments. Aseptic surgery led to the sale and use of instrument sterilizers, of sterile gauze and cotton, and most especially of instruments designed to be readily and effectively sterilized, as well as inexpensively made. Our colleague Jim Edmonson of the Dittrick Museum of Medical History in Cleveland, Ohio, has explored the effect of aseptic surgery on medical instruments and instrument making. Such procedures began in the 1880s, and by the early 1900s were becoming more and more standard. Thus aseptic surgery led to sterilizing instruments swabbing down patients robing, masking, and gloving surgeons and dressing wounds with sterile dressings. Aseptic surgery went farther, creating surgical conditions without germs. Spraying the operating room with carbolic acid, and dipping beards in the same chemical, were two such techniques. The Knick shows first the techniques not of aseptic surgery, but of antiseptic surgery-that is, surgery under conditions designed to combat germs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |