DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY. 
47 
will accomplish the purpose, and the only recourse left is to 
pack and close the wound. The patient in the standing posi¬ 
tion soon becomes restless and the one in the recumbent posi¬ 
tion would suffer from being tied long enough to arrest these 
troublesome haemorrhages. We are therefore justified in pro¬ 
longing a procedure to arrest severe haemorrhage only when the 
results would warrant. In most of the veterinary surgical 
wounds it is more practical to promptly pack and close a wound 
and then leave the subsequent steps of the treatment to be per¬ 
formed twelve to twenty-four hours later. 
Wounds, for the purpose of haemostasis, might be classified 
into : i, wounds with profuse haemorrhage ; 2, wounds with 
moderate haemorrhage, and 3, wounds with only capillary ooz¬ 
ing, but from a strictly practical standpoint a better classifica¬ 
tion is found in the following: 
1. Wounds with haemorrhage that can only be satisfactorily 
arrested by immediate packing, or cauterization. 
2. Wounds with moderate or slight haemorrhage that can be 
promptly arrested by torsion, baling and styptics. 
The first class include a large share of the surgical wounds, 
such as quittor, fistulae of the withers, poll-evil, ablation of 
tumors, foot lesions, caudal amputations, castration, and many 
others too numerous to mention. In all of these wounds it can¬ 
not be denied that the results would be much better if in the 
course of the operation all the blood was controlled perfectly 
so that the remaining steps of the treatment—disinfection and 
dressing—could be done to better advantage, but that it is not 
always practical nor even possible to control bleeding in the 
many veterinary operations, except by packing, is a fact that 
all experienced veterinary surgeons are well aware of. Some 
wounds of this class are nicely handled by actual cautery, but, 
of course, that cannot be universally adopted on account of the 
interference with healing. But, as referred to above, in the 
great majority of surgical wounds the only recourse the veteri¬ 
narian has that is entirely practical is to pack the bleeding 
wound with clean antiseptic wadding of oakum and hold it 
in place with temporary sutures or bandages, as the case may 
require. I11 twelve hours all danger of haemorrhage is over, 
and when the temporary dressing is removed the wound can be 
closed and properly dressed without the annoyance always 
caused by blood. Such temporary waddings should only be left 
in place until they have fulfilled their mission, i. e ., haemosta¬ 
sis, then they are promptly replaced with dressings which are 
