Stab wound/hemothorax treatment in early 1700s

[dinogrrl]

I'll put this behind a cut in case people don't want to read medical stuff.

Comments

[reynardo]

Allow me to recommend to you the joy that is the Google Book search. You can specify your timeframe, which I have done here by allowing books only up to 1720.

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=AfTYBAn04PwC&pg=PA69&dq=chest+wound&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPn8meu87pAhWUzTgGHf11ADUQ6AEIMTAB#v=onepage&q=chest%20wound&f=false

As far as I can read (it's a bit difficult with the old-fashioned grammar), they knew to use a tube in water to suck the air out of the cavity, clean out the wound with Liquor (something like Brandy I should think), make the patient breath in and out hard to reinflate the lung, put a tent (patch?) over the wound, and then if they don't die of infection, they have a good chance of recovery.

[dinogrrl]

I think this may be exactly what I'm looking for! Yeah I forget Google Book exists.

[dinogrrl]

Next little detail in need of figuring out: any ideas what the 'bending pipe' would have been made of? I've come across a few references to flexible silver urinary catheters from that time period (not sure how these would have been constructed), but I'm wondering if it would have been (or could have been, in a pinch) something made from leather or animal gut? I spent a good hour trawling antique medical instrument sites a bit ago, and I haven't found images of anything that I could call a 'bending pipe' that dates from prior to the mid-19th century or so. Rigid tubes are easy enough to figure out, it's the 'bending'/flexible part that's giving me a headache.

[reynardo]

I wouldn't be surprised if they used leather - oiled leather is waterproof and can be stitched pretty tight. Or a silver pipe coming out of a leather hose.

And for something very flexible, nothing like the old cured sheep gut. If it works for condoms, it'll work for air.