PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTS 65 



to calculate how many days the wound would require to be 

 completely healed. The part of different retarding agents 

 had to be appreciated, and either the real factors which 

 govern the phenomenon discovered, or, more likely, the 

 efficient and measurable factors which, under an apparent 

 simplicity dissimulate an infinite number of inaccessible active 

 elements. 



This goal once attained, it would be possible to determine 

 mathematically, instead of empirically as heretofore, the ad- 

 vantages and inconveniences of the different methods proposed 

 for the treatment of wounds, the effect of different antiseptics 

 and their respective qualities. A motivated choice could thus 

 be made and cicatrization obtained in as brief a time as 

 possible. 



Was the problem soluble? Would not each case obey its 

 own particular laws, or rather be rendered independent of 

 general laws and mathematics by imponderable factors such 

 as the individual temperament of each invaUd, his heredity, 

 his former life, his habits, the suffering which he had gone 

 through in the war? This was what I had to find out. 





^A*^ 



