50 
DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY. 
when the wounded body appears to be clean. It is never safe 
to regard an accidental wound u clean enough the circum¬ 
spect surgeon acts under the supposition that infective wound 
organisms are everywhere and governs his treatment accord- 
ingly. 
Here the reader might well be reminded of several points 
referred to in previous chapters : i. That wound organisms are 
more viable than the living animal cells. 2. That , as a consequence 
of their viability , they cannot be readily destroyed with antisep¬ 
tics that will not also “ kill” the wounded tissues. 3. That , 
without injury to the living animal cells , no form of sterilization 
will readily make septic area aseptic. 4. That the aim in 
wound treatment is to render organisms as innocuous as pos¬ 
sible and then create conditions not favorable to their farther 
development. 
The reader who will but digest the principles which can be 
deduced from these simple propositions will have mastered the 
subject of antiseptic wound treatment, while the one who dis¬ 
regards them will ever be groping in the dark, if he does not give 
up the whole affair as a hopeless undertaking. When one exam¬ 
ines a wound about the third day, after having treated it with great 
care, and finds it discharging a purulent secretion, the inclina¬ 
tion is to entirely discard the idea of asepsis in veterinary sur¬ 
gery. Such should not be the case, however. Failure, or even 
failure upon failure, should always be met with the most search¬ 
ing inquiry into its cause. When a wound becomes purulent 
there has been an error in its therapeutics, some part of the 
technique has been faulty, and the duty of the surgeon is to 
ferret out the faulty step. Perhaps the irrigation was not in¬ 
telligently executed, perhaps the unclean fingers were inserted 
into it, perhaps the sutures were doubtful, and so on through 
every item that was in any way related to the*wound before and 
during its treatment. Furthermore, by studying these four pro¬ 
positions it at once becomes apparent that wound sterilization is 
not a simple matter that can be accomplished by mere washing 
of a wound with antiseptic solutions. It is of course true that 
pyogenic organisms are killed by immersion in antiseptic solu¬ 
tions of certain concentrations for a given time, but when the 
irrigation of a wound is prolonged in compliance with such 
facts established in the laboratory it must not be forgotten that 
the tissues also suffer from prolonged immersion. Chemical 
substances that will promptly kill organisms and not molest the 
tissue albumen do not exist, nor is it at all probable that any 
