Excerpt from Glasgow Medical Journal, 1883, Vol. 19 Silk ligatures were used in securing blood-vessels. He ends were left long and brought out at either angle of the stump, so that when the process of ulceration was completed they could be removed piecemeal. In a way they acted as drains, but it is not difficult to see that a porous body such as silk, left for some time in a suppurating wound, must become thoroughly soaked with decomposing material, and as a natural consequence prove at the very least a source of irritation. The practice of passing a piece of rag between the flaps was equally bad, and instead of serving the purpose of a drain must rather have tended to retard the object for which it was introduced. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.