hospital gangrene

noun

1. Pathology. a contagious, often fatal gangrene, especially involving amputation stumps and war wounds, occurring usually in crowded, ill-kept hospitals, and caused by putrefactive bacteria.

Word History and Origins

Origin of hospital gangrene¹

First recorded in 1805–15

Example Sentences

This chain may in this case be further lengthened or varied with traumatic erysipelas or with hospital gangrene.

From Project Gutenberg

Robert publishes his observations on diphtheria of the skin and of wounds, which he attributes to an atmospheric contamination in crowded wards of hospitals, and looks upon it, with Delpech and Eisenmann, as a form of hospital gangrene.

From Project Gutenberg

Book-lore and the passing of examinations were as nothing in comparison with what this young man of twenty-seven had learned in roughly extemporised hospital, tent, and hut amidst the inclemency of a foreign clime, in the face of the horrible scourge of an Eastern epidemic, where the wounded died off like flies, not from the wounds, which under healthy environment would rapidly have healed, but from that deadly enemy, pyaemia, or hospital gangrene.

From Project Gutenberg

If persons whose systems were reduced by inanition should by chance stump a toe or scratch the hand, the next report to me was gangrene, so potent was the regular hospital gangrene.

From Project Gutenberg

And the result, in his hospital practice, as described by himself, has been, that even in the midst of abominations too shocking to be mentioned here, and in the neighbourhood of wards where death was rampant from pyaemia, erysipelas, and hospital gangrene, he was able to keep his patients absolutely free from these terrible scourges.

From Project Gutenberg