Word: catgut
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Ether fumes eddied through the crowded wardroom. The patient grimaced. "More ether," said Lipes. Two hours and a half after the operation started, Lipes took the last catgut stitch. At that moment the ether gave...
When Lister's ideas of cleanliness came into vogue, style was to keep everything wet with carbolic. Instrument tables were covered in towels wet with the acid, sponges were kept in it, the room was sprayed with carbolic acid until foggy. In those days catgut came in a five-foot coil to be soaked and sterilized by the doctors and "horsehair was obtained by going out to the ambulance stable and pulling out a handful from the tail of one of the horses...
...behind it, sometimes a third along the hair line at the temples. With a blunt instrument Dr. Shorell peels the skin from the underlying muscles, as though he were paring a peach. In the muscles, loose from age like worn-out elastic bands, he takes a tuck with absorbable catgut. No tissue is cut away. Then Dr. Shorell redrapes the skin over the tightened muscles, snips away the loose skin around the borders in much the way a cook trims...
...nerves of every living thing in Anatolia vibrated like taut catgut to the first, subaudible, microseismic music of an impending earthquake. The slow vibration became a horrible hum, and grew, like the sound of approaching bombers. Then the shock...