BANDAGE, a surgical wrapper applied to some part of the body. Bandages are employed for a variety of purposes. One of their chief uses is to secure dressings or splints. Another is to give support to a limb or to restrain its movements, or to exert pressure upon it so as to aid in restraining bleeding at some point; or a bandage may be used to promote healing, as in the case of ulcers, or to aid in the removal of swelling. In these latter cases the bandage must be applied with a considerable degree of tightness, and great care must be exercised that it be evenly put on, and that the tightness with which it is drawn does not give rise to disturb ances of the circulation by undue and irregular pressure. Suppose, for instance, the arm is being bandaged from the hand well up over the upper arm. The arteries which carry the blood down the limb are for the most part deeply seated and well protected by muscles, so that they are practically unaffected by any ordinary degree of pressure on the surface. But many of the veins which carry the blood back to the heart up the limb run immediately under the skin, and will be pressed upon considerably by a bandage .applied round the arm. If the ban dage is made too tight at the elbow, say, the veins will be compressed and the blood will flow less easily along them at that point than it does lower down where the pressure is less. The consequence will be that the blood will be hin dered in passing np from the hand; and as blood is all the time being carried down to the hand in the arteries, which are unaffected, the veins in the forearm and hand will become swollen and gorged with blood. The pressure of blood in the veins will become so great that fluid will be pressed out of the finer vessels into the surrounding tissues, and the hand will become swollen, puffy and dropsical, while much pain will be experienced. If the tight turns of the bandage are now loosened the veins will again offer a free passage to the blood and the swelling and pain will gradually subside. The proper method in such a case is not necessarily to bandage loosely, but to ban dage uniformly, beginning with the requisite de gree of tightness at the very extremity of the limb and continuing evenly and regularly.up ward. A general rule in bandaging a lunb, then, is: Never let the bandage be tighter up the limb than it is at the extremity; apply it firmly and evenly at the extremity and carry it up uniformly. To this may be added, as a
second rule, that if a bandage requires to be tightly applied in the course of a limb it must be begun at the extremity. It is specially neces sary to follow these rules when the bandage is applied to secure a splint, since it must be tight enough to keep the splint in accurate position, or to keep a pad firmly applied over a wound for the arrest of bleeding. Bandages usually consist of strips of unbleached or bleached calico, linen, flannel, muslin, etc. Elastic ban dages and India-rubber bandages are also in use for particular cases. The material should be torn into strips of the requisite breadth and the bandages should have no hem or edging, as this would prevent them stretching equally in all directions. The strips should be rolled un for use into firm rollers, a roller bandage being usually six yards long, though 'often more. They are of different breadth, most commonly 21/2 or 31/2 inches. For the chest and abdomen the breadth should be 4(/2 inches; for the fin gers three-quarters of an inch. The triangular bandage (Esmarch's) is of all others the one made use of for rendering .temporary aid in cases of accident, and, through the training af forded by °first aid to the injured* associations, is now familiar to almost everyone. The ban dage is made of a square yard of linen or calico halved diagonally, each half having of course two sides 36 inches in length, with a base of fully 50 inches. When it is desired to exert very considerable pressure upon a part for a length of time, or when it is desired to keep a limb or a joint motionless for some time, this may be done without the use of splints by stif f cning the bandages with starch or plaster of paris.
bin'di-san', Japan, a vol cano on the island of Nippon, 140 miles north of Tolcio. Its summit consists of several pealcs, the highest of which is 6,035 feet above the ocean and 4,000 feet above the surrounding plain. On 15 July 1888 there was a terrible ex plosion of steam which blew out a side of the mountain, making a crater more than a mile in width and having precipitous walls on three sides. The debris of broken rock and dust poured down the slope and over an area of 27 square miles, killing 461 persons and covering a number of villages.