★★★★★
The Pharmacology of the Newer Materia Medica: Embracing the Botany, Chemistry, Pharmacy and Therapeutics of New Remedies, page 655-, by George S. Davis, 1892
Report 9 * (T. S. Floyd, M. D., Sedgwick, Kansas, in a paper read before the Kansas State Medical Society, May, 1880 ‘Therapeutic Gazette, 1880, p. 185”) – Something over two years ago my attention was drawn to the probable value of this agent as a surgical dressing, and my first application was of the fluid extract in the following case: A boy about 12 years of age came into my office, his hand covered with blood, and told me his fingers had been canght between a rope carrying a heavy weight and the edge of an iron pulley over which it ran; an examination showed the terminal phalanges of the first and second fingers to be severely crushed, and the joint of the second finger laid open . Believing that amputation would be necessary, and as his parents were not present, I straightened the crushed fingers on a slip of pasteboard, and confined them with a few turns of a roller open at the ends, and then saturated the fingers and bandages with the fluid extract of eucalyptus, and sent the boy home, saying I would call and see him later. On my visit I found the saturated bandage almost as hard as a plaster splint; and the fingers giving no pain. As the bandage was open at the ends so that I could easily watch for any change that might demand interference, I resolved to allow the dressing to remain and apply through the open ends the fluid extract of eucalyptus, one part to seven of water. As neither pain nor suppuration supervened this dressing was allowed to remain for ten days, when I removed it and found the fingers I had first expected to remove, nicely healed; the joint was stiff and the nails gone, but the latter have since grown out and the joint, under passive motion, recovered almost its natural mobility. I have described this case at length, as it illustrates the method I have employed in a large number of injuries to fingers and hands, always allowing the first bandage, when it could be neatly and closely applied, to remain until the wounds healed, and in each case the result has been entirely satisfactory.
In cases similar to the one described it is specially applicable, as the saturated dressing hardens and forms a sufficient support.
