Surgery, with Special Reference to PodiatryStern, Maximilian
Science
Surgery, with Special Reference to Podiatry
Stern, Maximilian
Foot -- Surgery; Surgery
A tubercule is an infective granuloma, appearing to the unaided vision
as a semitransparent mass, gray in color, and the size of a mustard
seed.
The microscope shows that a tubercule consists of a number of cell
clusters, each cluster consisting of one or of several polynucleated
giant cells, surrounded by a zone of epitheloid cells which are
surrounded by an area of leucocytes. Giant cells, which also form by
coalescence of the epithelioid cells, are not always present. The
bacillus, when found, exists in the epithelioid cells, and sometimes
in the giant cells; it may not be found, having once existed, but
having been subsequently destroyed. It is often overlooked.
In an active tubercular lesion, even if the bacillus be not found,
injection of the matter into a guinea-pig will produce lesions in
which it can be demonstrated.
A tubercule may caseate, a process that is destructive and dangerous
to the organism. Caseation forms cheesy masses, which may soften into
tubercular pus, may calcify, and may become encapsulated by fibroid
tissue. Tubercular disease of the bones and joints have already been
described in a previous chapter.
+Treatment.+ Destroy the bacilli present and radically remove infected
areas which are accessible. Incomplete operations are apt to be
followed by diffuse tuberculosis.
Bier’s venous or obstructive hyperemia is especially to be recommended
in tuberculosis of the ankle joint (for technic, see chapter on
Therapeutics).
Plenty of fresh air, good nourishing food and tonics are indicated as
a routine treatment.
+Tetanus.+ Tetanus is an infectious disease, invariably preceded by some
injury. The wound may have been severe or it may have been so slight
as to have attracted no attention.
The disease is commonest after punctured wounds or lacerated ones of
the hands or feet, and before it appears, a wound is apt to suppurate
or slough, but in some instances the wound is found soundly healed.
Tetanus is due to infection by a bacillus (first described by
Nicolaier, and first cultivated by Kitasato), the toxic properties of
which, absorbed from the infected area, poison the nervous system
precisely as would dosing with strychnine.
+Symptoms.+ The onset is usually within nine days of an accident. At
first, the neck feels stiff and there is difficulty in swallowing, and
then the jaw also becomes stiff. The neck becomes like an iron bar,
and the jaws are rigid as steel. If the injury is on the foot, that
extremity usually is found to be rigid. Opisthotonos is present and
spasms are very marked. Swallowing in many cases is impossible. The
mind is entirely clear until near the end, one of the worst elements
of the disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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