That the malignancy of the disease is thereby increased, and the danger to the other inmates of the hospital enhanced, has been the opinion generally held on the adoption of such measures. If each patient was taken outside of the hospital, and placed in a tent by himself, it would be the most successful way of treating such cases. In an outbreak of this kind, wooden huts would be found most excellent hospitals, as I know from experience elsewhere. ally thfever was of a typhoid type. The most generous diet was always necessary; for though it may he i: as the case in the Peninsula, that an antiphlogistic treatment is at times necessaiy, it can be so only in -tron-' healthy men, who derived the disease
With us the depression of the powers of lite marked, anur cases, so far as I saw, the development of the..se resulted from a lowered general health more than in mi specific causes. It was, in many cases, a veritable "eln typhus." peculiar dark hue of the ken of by writers, was not common, though it was jccasionally seen; but the disagreeable smell and the rounded shape of the sore were almost always pre.
The introduction,.t' disinfectants into our military has done niueh to prevent the prevalence of this lisease, which committed such ravages during the Tic l-'iviich suffered most dreadfully from hospital gangrene in its worst form. The system they pursued of removing their wounded and operated oases from the Sw paper by Staff-Surgeon Boggie, in the first part of thir.l volume of the rransactiona of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh. camp to Constantinople at a very early date, the pernicious character of the transit, the crowding of their si lips and hospitals, all tended to produce the disease, and to render it fatal when produced. Many of their cases commenced in camp, but the majority arose in the the Bosphorus, where the disease raged rampant.
In the hospitals of the south of France it also prevailed, and, from what M. Lallour, surgeon to the " Euphrate " transport, tells us in his paper on the subject, it must have committed great ravages in their ships, from one of which, he says, sixty bodies were thrown over during the short passage of thirty-eight hours to the Bosphorus. With them the disease was the true " contagious gangrene," and attacked, not only open wounds, but cicatrices, and almost every stump in their They employed the actual cautery, after the manner of Delpech and Pouteau, with apparent success, to arrest it. The perchlorate of iron, charcoal, the tincture of iodine, lemon juice, &c., they empbyed as adjuvants. In both the French and Eussian hospitals, gangrene was often combined with typhus, and in such cases the mortality was fearful.
In the Crimea, during the heat of the summer of 1855, after the taking of the Quarries, and the assault on the great Redan in June, not a few amputations of the thigh were lost, from moist gangrene of a most rapid and fatal form. In the case of a few who lived long enough for the full development of the disease, gangrene in its most marked features became established; but most of the men expired previous to any sphacelus of the part overwhelmed by the violent poison vhich seemed to pervade and destroy the whole economy. GAN "t'the disease occurred in tour cases under my own in men who had had a limb utterly destroyed by round shot or grape.
In all tinknee-joints v pee was deep and prolonged, and the ation performed primarily in tin- middle third of the thiirh. Three of the four were of very intemperate haliits. All these cases took place about the same time, at midsummer, when many other similar cases appeared in camp. The wards, though full, were not overcrowded, and could, from their construction, be freely ventilated. The weather was sultry, and cholera was in the camp. The atmosphere was surcharged with electricity, and the dreaded sirocco prevailed. Wounds ally assumed an unhealthy aspect for days, when this pestilential wind blew. The cases of all those who in my wards seemed to be doing perfectly well up to sixteen hours, at the furthest, before death.
Three of them were seized on the eighth.amputation, just as suppuration was bein.Lr established. The fourth nn the fifth day. The seizure and consequent symptoms were identical in them all. In recording one case I relate all. During the ni-lit previous to death, the was restless, but did not complain of any particular uneasiness. At the nmnim-visit, the expression seemed unaccountably anxious, and the pulse was slightly rais.-d. The kin was moist, and the. By this time the stum]) felt, as the x pressed it, heavy like lead, and a burning, had begun to shoot fchioogh it. On nthe stump was found.-lightly swollt n and hard, and the discharge had become thin, gleety, coloured with blood, and having masses of m like gruel occasionally mixed with it.