PRACTICAL ANTISEPSIS IN SURGERY. 
795 
ORIGIN AL AR TICLES. 
PRACTICAL ANTISEPSIS IN SURGERY. 
By G. A. Johnson, D. V. M., Sioux City, Iowa. 
During the last quarter of the 19th century surgery has 
made such rapid progress that now major and difficult oper¬ 
ations are taken as matters of fact and have ceased to be the 
wonder of the times; especially is this true in surgery of 
mankind. 
This marvellous progress is very largely due to a better 
knowledge of the role played by micro-organisms in the process 
of wound repair. Medical literature is replete with treatises 
ranging from the short essay to the voluminous text-book, 
upon the subject of antisepsis in its various forms. While the 
surgeons of the human school have succeeded in gaining a po¬ 
sition nearer that of perfection than have those of the veterinary 
school, it is not to be understood that veterinary surgery has 
not made great progress. 
We have naught but commendation for the veterinary 
surgeon, who, being desirous of advancing his profession and 
establishing a reputation for himself, by attempting to follow 
the methods and modus operandi of the eminent surgeon of 
mankind and counselling his colleagues to go and do likewise, 
nor is it strange that in so doing he should at times have been 
carried beyond the essential landmarks of his profession by the 
swirl of “ the pace that kills,” in attempting to get similar 
results where conditions are so materially different as they are 
between the human and the brute patient. 
From a clinical view point we may consider wounds as 
surgical or accidental ; surgical wounds are such as result from 
surgical operations,—all others as accidental. 
While it is not within the province of this paper to enter 
into a discussion of the physiological or pathological phenomena 
of the process of repair, a short discussion of the classification 
of these phenomena may not be out of place. 
