PRACTICAL SURGICAL CLEANLINESS 



By MART R. STEFFEN, V.S., M.D.C., Brillion, Wisconsin 



There is now an apparent tendency among surgeons, 

 both human and veterinary, leading in the direction of 

 a sane, practical balance in the conception of surgical 

 cleanliness. 



As with many other good things, so also with our 

 ideas of sepsis and asepsis, extremes have been developed 

 and accepted which we are now endeavoring to adjust. 

 The treatment of fresh, accidental wounds seems to afford 

 the best field for the application of new and improved 

 thought along these lines, and the main point which 

 nearly all writers attempt to carry in recent articles is, 

 that the assumption of microhian contamination in all 

 wounds of an accidental nature is erroneous.^ Almost 

 without exception the various contributors to medical 

 and surgical papers dealing with this subject condemn 

 the doctrine which has, until recently, been generally ac- 

 cepted and which held that all accidental wounds were 

 to be treated as infected wounds. The result is that the 

 treatment of wounds is undergoing a change, especially 

 as regards the excessive washing and irrigating with anti- 

 septic solutions. It is pointed out that such washing and 

 irrigating is detrimental for two chief reasons ; one, that 

 it always devitalizes the tissues; the other, that it 

 mechanically removes the bacteriolytic exudate that ap- 

 pears almost instantly on all wounds — nature's means 

 of controlling whatever infection might be present. Dr. 



^See also the chapter on open joints in my boolc, Special Veterinary 

 Therapif, p. W. 



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