Thomas Clifford Allbutt

Name: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16 — Lister, Joseph Lister, 1st Baron
Author: Thomas Clifford Allbutt

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (1911)

Summary

“1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16 — Lister, Joseph Lister, 1st Baron”, published in 1911, is a work by Thomas Clifford Allbutt. It explores elements such as Semmelweiss, surgeon and spray.

Quotes from 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (Thomas Clifford Allbutt)

Thomas Clifford Allbutt, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (1911)

“ Often, too, these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences, so that patients, however extreme their need, dreaded the very name of hospital, and the most skilful surgeons distrusted their own craft. New hospitals or new wards were built, yet after a very short time the new became as pestiferous as the old; and even scrupulous care in ventilation and housemaids’ cleanliness failed to prevent the devastation. Surgery had enlarged its freedom, but only to find the weight of its new responsibilities more than it could bear. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas Clifford Allbutt, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (1911)

“ The agony of the sufferer had naturally and rightly compelled the public to demand rapid if not slap-dash surgery, and the surgeon to pride himself on it. Within decent limits of precision, the quickest craftsman was the best. With anaesthetics this state of things at any rate was changed. The pain of the operation itself no longer counted, and the surgeon was enabled not only to be as cautious and sedulous as dexterous, but also to venture upon long, profound and intricate operations which before had been out of the question. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas Clifford Allbutt, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (1911)

“ Happily this beneficent discovery was made in time to preserve the inestimable boon of the hospital system from the counsels of despair. When Lister took up the task speculation was on the wrong tack; the oxygen of the air was then supposed to be the chief cause of the dissolution of the tissues, and to prevent access of air was impossible. For instance, a simple fracture, as of a bone of the leg, would do perfectly well, while in the very next bed a compound fracture—one, that is, where the skin is lacerated, and access to the seat of injury opened out—would go disastrously wrong. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas Clifford Allbutt, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (1911)

“ It had long been the universal practice of surgeons to employ threads of silk or flax for tying arteries, long ends being left to provide escape of the pus (invariably formed during the tedious process of the separation of the ligature) together with the portion of the arterial coats included in the knot. Lister hoped that if, by antiseptic means, the thread were deprived of living microbes, it would no longer cause suppuration, but might be left with short cut ends to become embedded permanently among the tissues of the wound, which thus would be allowed to heal by primary union throughout. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas Clifford Allbutt, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (1911)

“ At one stage in these inquiries an attempt was made to provide an atmosphere free from living organisms by means of a fine spray of a watery solution of carbolic acid; for it was then supposed by Lister to be necessary not only to purify the surgeon’s hands and instruments and the skin of the patient about the seat of operation, but also to wage war with the microbes which, as Pasteur had shown, people every cubic inch of the air of an inhabited room. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas Clifford Allbutt, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (1911)

“ With the courtesy and serenity of his carriage he combined a passionate humanity, so often characteristic of those who come of the Society of Friends, and a simple love of truth which showed itself in his generous encouragement of younger workers. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas Clifford Allbutt, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (1911)

“ The truth is that the spray was only one of many devices tried for a while in the course of the long-continued endeavour to apply the antiseptic principle to the best advantage, and abandoned in favour of something better. Two main objects were always kept steadily in view by him—during the operation to guard the wound against septic microbes by such means as existing knowledge indicated, and afterwards to protect it against their introduction, avoiding at the same time all needless irritation of the tissues by the antiseptic. ”

Thomas Clifford Allbutt

Summary

Quotes from 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16… (Thomas Clifford Allbutt)

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