hospital gangrene

American  

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.

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Etymology

Origin of hospital gangrene

First recorded in 1805–15

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hospital gangrene

After my third week, an epidemic of hospital gangrene broke out in my ward.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 by Various

Later she put on a gingham overgown, sprinkled it and her hands with camphor, and went into the outer wards where the isolated patients lay—where hospital gangrene and erysipelas were the horrors.

From Ailsa Paige by Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)

Such terrible scourges as pyaemia and hospital gangrene were rife in all of them.

From Victorian Worthies Sixteen Biographies by Blore, George Henry

Fever, or hospital gangrene, or pyæmia, or purulent discharge of some kind may else supervene.

From Notes on Nursing What It Is, and What It Is Not by Nightingale, Florence

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

From A System of Practical Medicine by American Authors, Vol. I Volume 1: Pathology and General Diseases by Various