SURGERY IN WOUND TREATMENT ' 



By JOHN ERNST, D.V.M., Salt Lake City, Utah 



Wiounds are generally understood as being a solution 

 of continuity. They belong to the division of medical 

 science known as surgery. This does not allude to oper- 

 ative surgery alone, but includes such medical agents as 

 may be or are applied, with a view or for the purpose of 

 accomplishing certain specific results. It is said that 

 "it ought to be, as a matter of course, (perhaps it is so 

 in point of fact) that no one of intelligence and integrity 

 will assume the duties and responsibilities of surgical 

 practice without the due preparation and equipment, 

 which is only to be acquired by conscientious study and 

 complete knowledge of medical science at large." 



Especially and indispensably, a surgeon must be an 

 accomplished anatomist. His knowledge must be thor- 

 ough in the several divisions of anatomical science. He 

 must possess a familiar acquaintance with descriptive 

 anatomy; he must be fully instructed in surgical anat- 

 omy or the anatomy of regions ; he must have mastered 

 the last chapter in pathological anatomy; and if there 

 •are any other kinds of anatomy he must master them all, 

 and then he will have become an anatomist in fact and 

 qualified to practice surgery. Yes; a surgeon must be 

 an anatomist, and it ought to go without saying that 

 only a surgeon should practice surgery, whether his pa- 

 tient be biped or quadruped. No untrained layman 

 should presume to wield the knife and the cautery with 

 their associated arsenal of weapons and their appli- 



'Read at meeting of the Utah Veterinary Medical Association. 



137 



