TREATMENT OF WOUNDS 73 



character — serious on account of the magnitude of the 

 traumatism — are indeed numerous. They include the 

 surgical operations of animals that are actually worth 

 the trouble and expense entailed in their performance 

 and after-care, because the salvage is always consider- 

 able and in most cases amounts to the full value of the 

 individual afflicted. The existence of animal surgery 

 therefore depends largely upon our ability to work out 

 plans of wound treatment that will carry such patients 

 safely and promptly through the period intervening be- 

 tw^een the completion of the operation and the final 

 cicatrization of the wound. In short, to make animal 

 surgery actually worth while we must make, and then 

 manage, large wounds better than we have done hereto- 

 fore. 



Previously in this article we endeavored to show that 

 the initial fault in wound, treatment is the lack of 

 effort we make in the preoperative examination of our 

 surgical subjects. To wade recklessly into a patient be- 

 fore weighing carefully its ability to bear the effect of 

 the traumatism we are about to inflict seems to be a sin 

 we continue to commit. In view of the other obstacles 

 under which wound healing in animals must proceed 

 it is plainly important to start out with the best phys- 

 ical condition it is possible to produce. Every means 

 at our command should be drawn upon to accomplish 

 this end. 



I shall repeat that our best surgical subjects are 

 those well cared for, well fed, and worked enough to 

 keep them muscular, and the poorest risks are those 

 badly fed, worked hard, and housed in poorly venti- 

 lated stables. To the latter may be added animals sick 

 and enfeebled from the disease for which they are to 

 be operated upon. The former stand surgery well, while 

 the latter are victims of complications; the former need 



