As these kind of wounds are liable of becoming ulcers, great care should be taken in the beginning to treat them properly.—Wounds in general should not be dress’d or look’d to too often; in general it aggravates the parts, and retards healing. A wound should not be opened the first three days after the first dressing: nature is very kind, and requires care only to replenish what is deficient.
When an ulcer has commenced, see the treatment under that head.
Gun-shot Wounds.
These are the most terrible of all sorts of wounds; for it is not only the contusion that attends them, but frequently the ball forces strange things, as cloaths, &c. into the wound with it.
Gun-shot wounds at best are tedious in their healing, but very often, from their nature, liable to mortification, and thence become dangerous. Besides, it is seldom that the fleshy parts alone are wounded, but they frequently penetrate into the very bones themselves.
The first care in gun-shot wounds, is to extract the ball, or whatever is forced into the wound; in the next place, the wound should be dressed with Yellow Basilicon, (F) mixed with fine Precipitate (O).
No. I
Take Basilicon one ounce, fine Precipitate one scruple, and mix them.
The parts all round should be well fomented with warm claret, intermixed with Spirits of Wine and Camphor.
If the patient is full-bloody, and no blood lost by the wound, he should be blooded, and immediately treated as a patient in a fever.