EXTERNAL USES OF SILVER.—Silver nitrate has a wide range of usefulness in its external applications. It is employed as an escharotic, irritant, stimulant, alterative, astringent, and antiseptic.
—The solid or lunar caustic, has been found useful in stopping hxmorrhage from leech-bites. Fissures of the lips, tongue, nipples, rectum, and mucous patches and ulcers of the mouth yield kindly to ap plications of a 60-grain solution applied carefully on a pledget of cotton or by means of a camel's-hair pencil. In some eases the solid stick does better.
Boils and felons may be aborted by an early application of a strong solution of silver nitrate.
and suppurating wounds are benefited by applications of silver nitrate. The surface of indolent ulcers may be touched lightly with the solid stick, or a line may be traced within and parallel to the margin of the ulcer every day or two, the ulcer being strapped with di achylon adhesive plaster during the in tervals and the limb dressed with a roller bandage. The healing of suppurating
ulcers and wounds, with large flabby granulations, is hastened by an applica tion, every day or two, of the solid stick or strong solution. Indolent sinuses from buboes or from abscesses may be stimulated to healing with a strong solu tion or the solid stick.
Bed-sores may be aborted if, as soon as the surface reddens, it is brushed over with a solution (20 grains to the ounce) of silver nitrate. This treatment is of no avail in paralytics.
Lymphangitis of the forearm resulting from a poisoned wound of the finger may be cured by applying the solid stick over the lines of inflammation.
Spasmodic oesophageal stricture has been relieved by the use of a sponge pro bang saturated with a very weak solution of silver nitrate.