TREATMENT OF WOUNDS 67 



very serious wounds. It must be borne in mind first 

 of all that the wounds we meet and make, and the 

 nature of our animal patients, call for special systems 

 of management from the beginning to the end of the 

 healing period. After we have followed the general 

 principles which should govern the management of 

 wounds of all living creatures, there are still special 

 plans, systems, methods, and procedures applicable to 

 our patients which must be executed in order to meet 

 the requirements needed to obtain the best results. 



The necessity for skillful, scientific, ingenious wound 

 treatment is estimated best by those who venture into 

 the field of major surgery. Just so long as the surgeon 

 restricts his enterprises to minor procedures, the refine- 

 ment of technic required to succeed in major work is not 

 appreciated, as the minor wound heals in spite of the 

 method, while the major wound ends fatally or in some 

 other disaster. In short, if we desire to go onward 

 with our animal surgery we must first surmount the 

 various obstacles due to the fact that our patients be- 

 longing to the brute creation are unable to give the 

 surgeon any help, are barely worth the expense of 

 much surgical work, and are always dirty and are 

 always kept in dirty surroundings. To do good surgical 

 work even with these obstacles working against us, is 

 our task, and it is a task we must in some way master. 

 We are no longer compelled to sing the praises of 

 aseptic work; everybody now recognizes its merit, no 

 one but the very ignorant ignores it ; and as I once heard 

 a medical bystander remark: "Even the horse doctor 

 practices it." Ten years ago we were frantically de- 

 fending asepsis for animal surgery as a more or less 

 practical procedure; to-day everybody knows it can be 

 successfully practiced through almost every surgical 

 operation and through the postoperative convalescence. 



