158 EESTEAINT OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



with which an operation may proceed without discomfort to 

 the confined horse, and the decided freshness of the patient 

 after the operation is over. The operating table does not often 

 provoke exhausting struggles. With harness restraint the pa- 

 tient is uncomfortable throughout, and it is essential to hurry 

 the operation in order to shorten the duration of the confine- 

 ment. The patient always arises more or less exhausted, even 

 from short operations, while with the table two or even three 

 hours confinement will leave no exhaustive effect. In short, the 

 horse is much safer on the operating table than upon the floor 

 secured with casting harness. From the standpoint of thor- 

 oughness and exactness of the surgical technique, the table has 

 both good and bad points. The operations are much cleaner. 

 There are no flying particles from the litter and less dust in 

 the operating place, and as the surgical field can be more se- 

 curely tied there is much less danger of soiling the surgica' 

 wound and a much better opportunity of accurately executing 

 the various steps of the operation. The dissection, the hssmos- 

 tasis, the suturing, and the dressing are greatly facilitated by 

 the fixed state of the operating field." 



Professor W. L. Williams says: "We could not consistently 

 continue the use of the table in daily work for a period of 

 nine years, side by side with the various kinds of casting har- 

 ness, following the exclusive use of the latter during seventeen, 

 years' experience, ^except it had for us some points of superior- 

 ity in cases of sufficiently wide range of character to warrant 

 its installation and retention. Having made this use of the 

 table and after a long study of its practical working, with so 

 many radical changes that we have virtually operated four or 

 five different machines and studied them carefully, besides 

 temporarily operated upon or observed the actual working of 

 an equal number of others and borrowed therefrom and applied 

 to our own each feature commending itself to us, it is inevita- 

 ble that we should favor the one with which we are most fa- 

 miliar." 



Professor John A. W. Dollar says: "The advances of anti- 

 septic surgery and the invention of the new operating machine 

 have placed in the hands of veterinary surgeons a means of over- 



