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DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY. 
DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY. 
By L. A. and E. Merieeat, 
of the McKillip Veterinary College , Chicago , III. 
ANTISEPTIC WOUND TREATMENT. 
The principles which now govern the therapy of wounds 
have been piacticed in human surgery and have been known to 
the reading veterinarian since the late 6o’s, and with the ex¬ 
ception of changes from time to time in the details of their ap¬ 
plication, they have lemained unchanged through thirty years 
of almost incomprehensible advancement in the sciences con¬ 
cerned, i. e ., pathology, bacteriology, and surgery, During the 
last twenty years they have remained unchallenged and the 
searching scrutiny to which they have been subjected by the 
savants of the medical profession has onlv served to further 
demonstrate their exactness. What was a mere theorem in 
186/ soon became an axiom and subsequently a corollary. In 
fact, so promptly did they revolutionize wound treatment that 
but a short time elapsed after their introduction into human sur¬ 
gery before it was regarded as criminal negligence to entirely 
disregard them. 
But it cannot, be truthfully said that the same revolution 
lias taken place in veterinary surgery. On the contrary, the 
old methods or perhaps new empirical ones are still practiced 
b) a laige majority of veterinarians both of this country and of 
Europe. Here and there we meet a practitioner who has 
adopted u Bister’s Postulates” for certain operations and here 
and there anothei who partially respects them in his practice 
generally, but the rank and file have never taken them seriouslv, 
at least not seriously enough to ever establish the claim of being 
up-to-date surgeons in the eyes of the scientist or educated lay¬ 
man, who, by the way, are equally wide awake to the meaning 
of the word u antiseptic.” 
It would seem hard to assert that the majority of veterinari¬ 
ans are not familiar with these principles even though so few 
ha\ e actually taken advantage of them. The truth is we have 
spent 50 yeais pleading their inapplicability to veterinary 
wound tieatment instead of engaging ourselves in working out 
methods suitable foi our purpose. We plead that our operative 
procedures often bring us too small remuneration to put into 
effect all the necessary details of antiseptic wound treatment, 
and that we are frequently confronted with obstacles that pre- 
