New Treatment for Burns.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 5 June 1914, Page 2

New Treatment for Burns.

In the Children's Hospital, Melbourne, severe burns are treated in a novel way by Dr. E. T. C. Milligan and his assistants. Moisture is rigidly excluded and alcohol is rubbed in to. ensure perfect cleanliness. The patient is anaesthetised, usually with chloroform, and the burns are washed wi'th sterile gauze wrung out of 70 per cent, alcohol. The whole surface is rubbed vigorously till all dead skin and blisters are removed. Then a dressing of gauze soaked in alcohol applied. This process is repeated daily. When the dressing is removed it pulls dead tissue with it. Deep burns shrivel up and dry and the dead tissue is cut off with a'scalpel. After about eight days—longer in the case of deep burns—the place is covered with boroglyceride gauze or rubber tissue, and it is,astonishing with what rapidity it heals. . Patients who have received too great a shock to stand an anaesthetic have their burns treated for two or three days with a watery saturated solution picric acid on lint, which every day is carefully lifted but not removed, and more of the solution poured on. By the third day, says Dr. Milligan, the patient is either obviously going to die or can s&and an aesthetic. Dr. Milligan has lost only one case in five months of constant use of this treatment, and this case was complicated by inter-

nal injuries