Fig. 13
Cicatricial deformity following specific ulcer. (Original.)
Investigations in the laboratory have led to the employment of peptonized preparations, among which are peptonized cod-liver oil and some of the partially or predigested foods, such as bovinine, etc. These appear to have the power of digesting sloughs and of causing a speedy separation or disposal of everything necessary in the endeavor to secure a healthy condition of the ulcerating surface and give most satisfactory results. When sloughs are present it is an advantage to dust over them papoid, caroid, etc., which have the power of catalytic disposition of decomposing material without reference to the action of bacteria. Under their use there seems to be a solution and disposition of these dead products. With a foul ulcer—one from which the discharge is more or less offensive, due usually to decomposition of sloughing masses, not yet separated—the method of continuous immersion in hot water, when it can be performed, is always valuable. But nothing seems to equal brewers’ yeast for this purpose. It may be applied on absorbent cotton (which should be soaked in it) and covered with oiled silk. Its curative property may be ascribed to the nuclein which it contains in a nascent state. It will, when fresh, clean off a sloughing surface better than anything I ever used.
Many ulcers are surrounded with such firm, indurated borders that it seems impossible that any active regenerative process can arise from such source. Hence, incisions have been practised for centuries. These have been made radially from the centre or have been made parallel to the margin of the ulcer, or sometimes the firm, dense tissues have been minced or chopped by a series of cross-cut stabs or incisions; as the result of which renewed activity has arisen, and an impetus given to the healing process. These methods, however, have yielded to that alluded to above. The ulcer in which granulation has come to a standstill is often treated with the sharp spoon or curette. The result of this has been to provoke again a speedy renewal of granulation efforts, and treatment by curetting is standard and often useful. Actual cauterization of the ulcer with a view to such complete destruction of its covering and border as shall lead to their separation by the sloughing process is occasionally practised. This is perhaps best performed with the actual cautery. It lacks, however, the valuable features of the operative method, to be described below. Modern methods have made it plain that it is often an absolute waste of valuable time to resort to the older expedients of stimulation, incising the edges, etc., and that one can accomplish by an operation in perhaps three weeks what ten times that length of time would fail to do by older methods. The most effective method, therefore, in dealing with old and chronic ulcers is to anesthetize the patient, to excise the entire affected area—i. e., the surface which ought to be granulating and the firm border and tissue in its neighborhood—and then to cover the surface either with skin grafts, pared off with a razor according to the Thiersch method, or with a strip of skin whose full thickness is raised, which is taken from surrounding parts by some autoplastic or heteroplastic method. This line of treatment is so far preferable to all others that, except in case of refusal of the patient to submit to it, it is the one which must hereafter commend itself. It may afford opportunity for extensive plastic operations or for the exercise of the best discretion and knowledge of experienced men; yet cases are rare in which it cannot be successfully performed. These methods of skin grafting have so far supplanted the older method of sponge grafting that the latter is now seldom practised. It may possibly have a sphere of usefulness in certain ulcerated cavities, but under all other circumstances it must take a position far below the plastic methods in practical value.
Finally, ulcers of specific type—syphilitic, tuberculous, leprous, glanderous, etc.—need methods in which the first effort should be not so much to arrange for healing as to dispose of infectious material. The knife, the scissors, the sharp spoon come first into use here, the surgeon bearing in mind that almost all this material is more or less infectious, and that inoculation of his own hands is possible as the result of carelessness. After taking away with instruments all the granulation tissue, with its surroundings, which seems to expose to danger, it is well to cauterize the part with the actual cautery, nitric acid, bromine, or zinc chloride.
The markedly hemorrhagic ulcer, whose surface bleeds on the slightest contact or disturbance, is often a cancerous ulcer, though not necessarily so. This ready bleeding is usually the effect of the fragility of the walls of the new-formed bloodvessels. In many instances it is sufficient to scrape until harder or more resisting tissue is encountered. Hemorrhage may be profuse for the moment, but it is easily controlled. Caustics may then be applied or not, according to the judgment of the surgeon.
Another method is to treat such a surface with the actual cautery. Another is to operate, even in the presence of incurable disease, in order to check a tendency to fatal hemorrhage before the disease has expended itself. In a general way, in regard to small, ulcerating, cancerous surfaces, it may be said that if they bleed excessively or are unduly irritable, it is preferable to attack them by operative measures in spite of the impossibility of effecting a cure.
There are other methods of treating ulcers, but they have mainly been abandoned for those mentioned.