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

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)

Surgeons, ignorant of antisepsis, and careless nurses, spread the infection along, until in some instances it reached a virulence which burst into the dreaded "hospital gangrene."

From Preventable Diseases by Hutchinson, Woods

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

From The Autobiography of a Quack and the Case of George Dedlow by Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)

They did not come in scorbutic, like their predecessors; and they had no reason to dread hospital gangrene or fever.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 50, December, 1861 by Various

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

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