1I4 VETERINARY SURGICAL THERAPEUTICS. 
eschar, and which, uniting with it, rendered itimputrescible. If caustics 
are deposited in small quantities over large and thick eschars, they are 
harmless, but their action may spread and corrode healthy structures, 
It has been wrongly said that they have an especial affinity for diseased 
tissues, and that, if they are used with care, their destroying action re- 
mains limited to gangrenous soft parts, as to suppurating or carious. 
bony tissues. As Reclus remarks, the legend of the ‘‘ intelligent caus- 
tics’ is no longer current. When the sphacel is extensive, instead of 
destroying the whole of the eschar, one may make with the red iron 
scarifications close to one another, which having partly burnt, are after- 
wards filled with disinfecting powders or liquids. 
When the process of elimination is completed, the wound resulting 
from the slough of the mortified tissues is at times simple and covered 
with a layer of active, healthy granulations, and requires the same treat- 
ment as solutions of continuity with loss of substance; at other times it 
is complicated with necrotic alterations (aponeurosis, tendon, liga- 
ment, bone), or with lesions, involving large blood vessels, and with in- 
flammation of a synovial or of a splanchnic serous membrane. 
The general treatment is important only in gangrenes of a dyscratic or 
infectious origin. Narcotics should be used only in cases where the 
pain is great. Antiseptics are always useful when the sphacels are 
extensive and threaten infectious accidents. Local disinfection is 
always far more important than any of the various internal medications 
recommended. 
There are special rules for the treatment of gangrene according to 
the form it assumes. 
Dry gangrene, which we meet most frequently in animals, whether due 
to the compressive action of the harness or to continued decubitus, are 
generally accompanied by sharp pains while the process of sloughing 
goes on. According to their seat, they are treated sometimes with 
emollient or narcotic preparations of vaseline, or most commonly with 
vesicating agents which are better to quicken the slough of the eschars. 
These, generally dried up and parchment like, putrefy only on their 
borders, where they are macerated in pus; they do not, as in moist 
gangrene, expose the parts to infectious accidents ; there is no objec- 
tion to leaving them entire and intact until they drop. Partial excision, 
however, is advisable for the extensive stickfasts of the withers and of 
the neck, which have such an offensive odor. If the suppuration is 
abundant, free disinfecting washings are to be insisted upon. In no 
case are the scabs to be torn away, no more than other eschars. 
resulting from a dry mortification ; doing so might produce secondary 
necrotic lesions in the cervical or dorsal regions or in the lower part of 
the extremities ; and in the neighborhood of a juint, it might be followed. 
