THE PRINCIPLES OF ANTISEPSIS IN THE TREATMENT OF ECZEMA. 
405 
preserving life; without it a fatal issue would be inevitable. For 
instance, an operation upon brain-tissue, or those involving ex¬ 
posure of a knee-joint, or those of the gamble-joint, or in 
operations upon the foot, not only should every precaution be 
taken against probable sources of contagion, but every possible 
source should be excluded; hence the chance of air contaeion 
should be duly considered, and should be provided against by 
removing from the operating room all dust-holding fabrics, tak¬ 
ing care to have the floor and operating table thoroughly cleaned 
and damp by bichloride solution, one part to five parts, immedi¬ 
ately before operating and in many cases it is advisable to keep 
the doors and windows closed from the beginning to the end of 
the operation. It should be the aim of all veterinarians to re¬ 
serve as soon as possible an operating room exclusively for all 
operations. But in dermatology, although the object of its study 
and its therapeutic actions, the outer integument of the horse’s 
body, is constantly in its entirety exposed to all the dangers of 
microbe infection, comparatively little has been written in veter¬ 
inary science of antisepsis. It is true, if we look over the list of 
remedies generally employed by the veterinarian in the treat¬ 
ment of diseases of the skin, we shall find a large number of 
drugs the action of which is decidely an antiseptic one, be it that 
they have been introduced or discovered only since the antisep¬ 
tic era, on this very account be it that they had been in use long 
before, and only on later investigation were found to have anti¬ 
septic properties. If thus the veterinarians are actually applying 
antiseptic treatment, it is apparently often done unconsciously 
and unintentionally without a proof that they realize the pres¬ 
ence of conditions which require antiseptic measures, and without 
either a clear understanding of the meaning of their therapeutic 
action itself or the distinct expression of their intentions. Still 
I believe that a certain lack of pronounced general principles 
in treatment is one of the obstacles to simplification of derma¬ 
tological therapeutics and one of the causes favoring the publi¬ 
cation in the veterinary journals of the numerous “useful” form¬ 
ulae for prescriptions against skin diseases. This can be said 
