270 DEMONSTRATIONS OF ANTISEPTIC SURGERY BEFORE 



catgut in the ordinary condition is utterly unfit for surgical purposes ; as 

 slippery, when moistened, as a piece of intestine in the dead-house — when you 

 tie it in a knot, it slips with the utmost ease. But after it has been steeping in 

 the emulsion of carbolic acid, water, and oil for a certain length of time, it 

 undergoes a physical change, which I am quite at a loss to explain. As the 

 tissue lies steeping in this mixture, the first effect is to moisten it somewhat ; 

 then, as time passes, after about a week, you find that, instead of becoming 

 softer, more swollen, and more opaque, as you would expect, it is, on the con- 

 trary, growing less opaque and beginning to shrink ; and in about three months, 

 though still softer than dry catgut, it is comparatively firm, and quite trans- 

 parent. Now, if you take a fresh piece of dry catgut and put it into this same 

 sample of the preparing liquid, you will find the second piece become in the 

 first instance partially moistened like the first ; a fact which renders it in- 

 explicable to me, why the former piece should have undergone what looks like 

 a partial drying. But whatever the explanation, the all-important fact is this, 

 that after the catgut has been thus partially dried, so to speak, in this moist 

 liquid, it is now no longer liable to be made slippery by being steeped in water 

 or the animal juices at the temperature of the body : it is indeed rendered 

 softer and somewhat opalescent, but a reef-knot tied upon it holds better than 

 one on waxed silk. I repeat, when I first published on the subject, I was not 

 aware of this circumstance. I had got the catgut properly prepared, but it 

 was by mere accident that the water which is essential to the process was present 

 in the mixture that I used ; and, ignorant of its importance, I omitted to 

 mention it in the description which I gave of the mode of preparation ; whereas 

 mere steeping of catgut in a solution of dry carbolic acid in oil, though it of 

 course makes it antiseptic, leaves it perfectly unfit for use as regards its physical 

 properties. When I found out my mistake, I sought to remedy it by insisting, 

 in subsequent publications, upon the importance of the presence of the water 

 in the preparation of the catgut ; but I never stated, as I now do, that I had 

 originally described an untrustworthy method. I very much regret this bad 

 result of what turns out to have been premature publication ; and I earnestly 

 hope that this public confession of my mistake will have the effect of preventing 

 any further bad consequences from it. 



The catgut does not spoil by being kept a long time in the preparing fluid 

 of oil, carbolic acid, and water. Here is some that was put in six years ago 

 last month. It is now just as good as ever. Thin as it is, I cannot break it 

 with any reasonable force. If you were going to tie the external iliac, you 

 would use a thicker piece than this ; partly, in order that it may stand any 

 strain to which it could be reasonably subjected in the act of ligature, and partly 



