130 
DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY. 
with strong antiseptic solution, 5 per cent, to 1 per cent, mer¬ 
curic chlorid being the best. Be exceedingly careful with the 
sutures, as they penetrate deeply into the wound and are hence 
more dangerous than the bandages and wadding. 
14. Apply the protective coverings as perfectly as the condi¬ 
tions permit, but do not permit them to interfere with proper 
drainage, as it is quite impossible to keep a poorly drained 
wound aseptic. 
15. Learn to regard the item—pus—as you would tetanus, 
following an operation. Both result from the same bad tech¬ 
nique, and the surgeon who has tetanus follow has made no 
greater error than the one whose wounds discharge a purulent 
secretion. Remember that all wounds secrete, but when the 
secretion is purulent the surgeon’s methods are faulty. Do not, 
however, mistake the whitish secretion of granulating surfaces 
for the pus of pyogenic cocci. 
16. By all means practice antiseptic treatment. 
(The end.) 
SURGICAL ITEMS. 
u Preparation ,” u Performance ,” and “ After-Treatment" 
are the three major divisions of all surgical operations. No 
matter how simple the operation is the veterinary surgeon can 
no longer afford to risk his professional reputation by making 
even the slightest error in any one of these steps. Intelligent 
and methodical execution of each step means good surgery, 
while slip-shod methods will always savor of incompetence and 
empiricism.—( L . A. M.) 
The large majority of writers, both European and American, 
on chloroformization, elaborate specially upon the time it re¬ 
quires to bring a horse to the surgical stage of anaesthesia with 
chloroform. The required time usually given is from 15 to 40 
minutes. The shortest time recorded by Moller is 7 minutes in 
a 4-year-old horse with 35 grams of chloroform, while the aver¬ 
age among 126 patients, stallions, geldings and mares of all 
ages, is from 18 to 22 minutes. These statements seem remark¬ 
able to me in view of the fact that I have never yet failed to 
bring a horse to the profound stage of anaesthesia in less than 
3 minutes, and in many instances in 30 seconds. As the dis¬ 
crepancy in time is of course due to the different methods of 
administration, the question naturally arises, whether the “ slow ” 
method has so much advantage over the “ rapid ” as to warrant 
