Word: catgut
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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...
...down the sick man's back, beside and below his shoulder blade. Carefully Dr. Graham slit through tough chest muscles, removed sections of seven ribs, neatly severed the lumpy grey lung high up where the windpipe separates into two branches. Then he tied the stump with a tight catgut knot. Finally he stitched up the chest muscles. To his great joy, his colleague survived...
...immediately replaced and the pericardium stitched with catgut. A small opening was left in which Dr. Nicoll inserted a rubber drainage tube. Then he tucked the ribs back in place with 50 stitches. A week later, after several blood transfusions, the drainage tube was removed. For five weeks Patrolman Manning remained in an oxygen tent, and for several months he was given massages to stimulate his heart muscles. Last week Manhattan papers reported that Patrolman Manning was well enough to attend Magistrate's Court for the hearing of his case...