Grafting with Frog Skin

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Issue 2, 1 April 1917, Page 97

Grafting with Frog Skin

H. W. M. Kendall

By

M.R.S.C., Captain, R.A.M.C., 8.E.F., France.

The idea of grafting granulating surfaces vyith frog skin was put into practice b}' me as far back as 1886-7 in India at Chunat, Bengal, where some of the men were afflicted by ulcer of the legs, more or less indolent in character. I cannot say for certain now exactly how I got the theory, but think it was suggested through some native source. At any rate, as frogs, ulcers, and time were plentifully at my disposal, I experimented, with satisfactory results to the patients, gratfication to myself, and the least possible inconvenience and injury to the frogs. My reason for recalling the matter is that, being quartered in France, where supply and demand of material are both abundantly, 1 have been enabled to re-apply the method with again the same gratifying results. The large number of granulating wounds caused chiefly by shrapnel, which are slow in healing and in which a contracting scar is likely to give possible inconvenience later, on account of position, friction, etc., induced me to again resort to this method of grafting. Captain Kendall gives a large number of cases nearly all successful, and showing the short time required for the successful result, and goes on to say : The ideal wound to graft is a flat one without much suppuration or excessive protuberant granulations. The rapidity with which the wound commences to heal after the graft has successfully adhered is in marked contract to its sluggishness before the operation. _ My modus operandi is simple : The wound having been gently cleaned without antiseptics and as gently dried, the loose skin on the innner

side of the frog's thigh is carefully pinched up in a pair of forceps, snipped off wth scissors, spread out, and applied by its under surface to the wound. A strip of gutta percha tissue smeared with ome mild and soft non-irritating emollient is then placed over it, fixed in position at its ends by adhesive plaster, and a dry dressing applied over all. The whole is gently removed in three days' time, when the site of the graft will be noticed as a purplish spot branching outwards to the periphery of the wound. A similar dressing is again applied for two days to avoid unnecessary interference, after which the wound may be dressed daily without the gutta percha tissue, with some simple non-irritating ointment, such as boracic, until healing is completed. The gap in the sk'n's continuity is by this process tilled up and unsightly *or in convenient contraction avoided. I have tried frog skin grafting once only in this interval of thirty years, in New Zealand, after a radical mastoid operation, but have no knowledge of the ultimate result, as the patient left, I believe, for her home in Germany, shortly afterwards. In addition to leaving a supple scar, this method has the advantage of transplanting skin free of hair, and is inocuous of diseases possibly conveyed in human skin. My reason for not using antiseptics is to avoid destroying the delicate epithelium formed from the graft, in the same sense that injudicious antiseptics may render a vaccination inert. I think the method would prove useful in many kinds of slow-healing sores, varicose ulcers with or without a tendency to adhere to the bony burns after the acute stages have passed off, large abrasions or ulcerating surfaces on the face or exposed parts or in mastoid cavities where trans' plantation of skin is indicated.