26 ANTISEPTIC TREATMENT OF WOUNDS. 
Eighth—Gauze, mull (muslin)—Both materials are much 
liked in a fatless condition, as they hold well together. They 
are used in the shape of benzoic acid gauze (5 to Io per cent.) 
boric acid gauze, carbolic gauze, creolin gauze, iodoform gauze 
(10 to 50 per cent.), salicyl gauze (10 per cent.), sublimate gauze, 
serosublimate gauze, tartaric acid gauze and thymol gauze. 
Ninth—Glass wool—This represents a confusion of the 
finest glass threads, and is warmly recommended by KUEM- 
MELL. : 
Tenth—Sand, cokes, ashes—These substances are used by 
SCHEDE with advantage, especially for the filling in of in- 
juries of the bones in the shape of sublimate sand. 
2. DISINFECTION MATERIALS. 
The word “disinfection” explains itself, so that a definition is, 
perhaps, unnecessary, especially as the conception of an in- 
fection has been sufficiently explained, but to be explicit, dis- 
infection means nothing else than the removal of the infection, 
and as the existence of an infection is to be looked for in the 
wound, as far as life and actions of micro organisms are con- 
cerned, the object of the disinfection is simply to make these 
micro organisms innocuous. Disinfection of a wound, or an 
instrument, or the operating field, etc., therefore means mak- 
ing innocuous the infectuous germs located in the respective 
media. 
The ways which are at our disposal are various. 
First—We remove from the article which is to be disinfected 
all pathogenic germs. 
Second—We certainly leave the microbes in their substra- 
tum but 
(a) we kill them direct, or , 
(b) we make the nutritive medium in which they grow unfit 
for their future growth, and thus cause their death. 
Following the maxim “Cessante causa cessat effectus” the 
removal of the micro organisms from the focus of infection 
would be the. most rational way to get rid of an infection, but 
in many cases it is impossible to follow this indication, as we 
