20 ANTISEPTIC TREATMENT OF WOUNDS. 
germs contained in the straw, into the air, and infect the wound. 
[Shavings of southern pine—pinus palustris—is the safest 
bedding for an operating room either for temporary or perma- 
nent use. They seem to retain their original antiseptic proper- 
ties and wound infection can seldom be traced to them. By 
sprinkling them with a 1 per cent solution of permanganate of 
potash before the operation, all dust is allayed and a veritable 
antiseptic litter is the result—L. A. M.] 
The stall litter as a carrier of infection germs has to be 
judged from a different standpoint, because of its importance 
in agriculture and its different nature and management as com- 
pared with the material used as an operating bed. The 
stall litter is to the animal not only a resting place, but it serves 
as an agent to collect the animal excrements for the purpose of 
making them more valuable for agricultural use. On this 
account it is seldom that the best material is used for litters; 
musty, frequently already rotten straw of various plants is 
thrown in, foliage, pine needles, spoiled hay, wood shavings, 
dry peat, etc.,are often substituted on account of lack of cheaper 
or better bedding material. Though these materials them- 
selves are already sufficiently infested with infectious germs, 
the sustinance of the latter increases still more on account of 
the urine and manure mixing with it; not because urine and 
manure are very rich in micro organism, but because these 
substances are excellent nutritive mediums for micro organ- 
isms. This fact has been sufficiently proven by KITT, as 
far as anthrax bacilli are concerned, and it is hardly to be 
doubted that other pathogenic fungi find their means of life in 
them. Besides if stall litter is thus looked upon as an import- 
ant infection carrier, it is still more so the case if we considér 
that on account of decomposition it has a higher temperature 
which is favorable to the thriving of micro organisms. 
[Through experiments conducted in the bacteriological lab- 
oratory of the McKillip Veterinary College, German peat, 
which is commonly used as stall bedding, was found to contain 
tetanus bacilli in large numbers and tetanus traced to this 
source was always very acute and fatal—L. A. M.] 
