528 LANCASHIRE VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
yourselves Well, this is all very well where it can be applied, but we can 
never do to be bothered with all this cumbersome detail. 
I will without enlarging try and demonstrate to you how we can with 
the greatest benefit apply a modified form of antiseptic treatment in our 
cases. I have here a portion of the shaft of a cart, which in a collision 
was driven into the muscles of the thigh of a blood chestnut mare. It 
entered about four or five inches above the right stifle, and pursued a 
course from before backward, coming out through the biceps rotata 
tibialis muscle. The force must have been terrific, first of all to make 
it pierce the skin twice, traverse all that mass of muscle, and after 
making an indentation on the face of the dash-board, it was broken off 
as far as you see it, and the mare was brought from Cheetham Hill 
Road to Moreton Street with this buried in the muscles of the thigh. 
Very considerable force was required after a rope was passed through 
the D to withdraw it. Now, the treatment in this case was strictly 
antiseptic, and although exceedingly simple most satisfactory. We first 
passed a large strong probe armed with cotton wool and saturated 
with carbolic acid and glycerine into the wound to destroy any germs. 
Then so fastened a large piece of lint saturated with the same that it 
covered both external openings. No water in any form whatever was 
allowed to go near it. No fomentations. No cold water pipe. Simply 
wiped away the discharge with dry materials, as tow or wool, and kept 
the lint saturated with the carbolised oil or glycerine. In a fortnight 
the posterior external opening was closed. In three weeks from the 
anterior one just a drop of sweet pus occasionally oozed, whilst in less 
than four weeks it was entirely healed and the mare discharged. In a 
case like this it would be almost impossible to prevent suppuration, but 
this method will prevent putrefactive suppuration. 
The late Mr. Haycock used to say wounds did better without water, 
that it washed the healing away. It is needless to say that I was then 
not open to conviction; and although he was wrong in his theory, the 
fact he had noted was correct, as all facts must be, and will, if not now, 
at some future time, be acknowledged by all surgeons. 
It is astonishing what prejudice custom creates. It is said of an old 
departed yet celebrated French surgeon, that the whole body of surgeons 
in his day condemned him because he had the courage to operate on the 
wounded after a great battle, before the boiling oil that it was then the 
custom to pour on wounds and the stumps after amputation could be 
procured. I say his professional brethren shunned him as one likely to 
bring discredit on his calling, because after he had noted the fact that 
his cases did better when treated without the oil, and that he therefore 
determined to discontinue its use. Whilst speaking of bygone days, I 
would just remark that no doubt many of the old severe dressings applied 
to wounds were too antiseptic, and that they not only destroyed the 
germs, but the tissues too. The operation of Neurotomy is, perhaps, one 
of the most convenient in our practice to apply antiseptic treatment, 
which can be done in the following manner :—Under the limb to be 
operated upon place a dry, clean towel over the straw, touch with an 
antiseptic, as carbolic and glycerine, the skin to be cut, and your instru¬ 
ments, and instead of using a sponge, if there should be haemorrhage, use 
the dry towel. After the operation touch the whole of the interior of 
the wound with the antiseptic dressing, put in a wire or catgut suture, 
if necessary; then a small pad of cotton wool soaked in the dressing, 
next to the wounds, over that another pad of dry cotton wool and a dry 
bandage, which allow to remain undisturbed until such times as you 
think the wounds are healed. With this method there is little or no 
swelling of the limb, no suppuration; and the last case in which I 
