Page:Wound infections and some new methods for the study of the various factors which come into consideration in their treatment.djvu/28

14 the form of a nozzle, and is furnished with a lateral mouth with a raised rim—the whole being very easily made out of a piece of glass tubing, or small test-tube. To the nozzle we fit a piece of fairly thick walled rubber tubing, and this is blocked at the end with a piece of glass rod. When we want to obtain the exudate from a wound we bring down the lateral opening of the lymph leech upon a granulating surface, and then, transfixing the rubber tube with the needle of a hypodermic syringe, we draw out the air and make a negative pressure (fig. 6). It will be appreciated that the lymph leech is in principle merely a small cupping glass, and that it will, by means of the vacuum we establish in it, hold on tight for whatever period may intervene between dressing and dressing, and furnish an exudate free from all contamination with residual pus left behind in the wound. We can now proceed to compare the fluid in the cavity of the leech with the fluid in the wound outside; or, in connexion with work on antiseptics, to compare the contents of leeches applied respectively to treated and untreated surfaces in the same wound.

And lymph leeches also can be put to other uses. We can introduce for this purpose with a syringe any fluid we may select into the lymph leech, and investigate the effect that fluid exercises upon