A review of the history of the seasponge shows that this substance has long been employed for various medical and surgical purposes, but as far as we have been able to ascertain never until quite recently has it been deliberately used as a dressing for clean surgical wounds.
The object of this paper is to call attention to the value of the seasponge as a surgical dressing and to give the results of our experience with it.
HISTORY
The knowledge of the seasponge is of great antiquity. Herodotus mentions in Urania (Chapter 8) the celebrated sponge diver Skyllias of Skione, and the sponge is mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey (Song 22, Verse 455), and by Aeschylus in Agamemnon (Verse 1,329).Aristotle (B. C. 384) gives an account of the contemporaneous theories concerning the vitality of the sponge, and gives arguments to prove that it is a sensitive animal, stating