THE AFTER-TREATMENT OF CASES OF ABDOMINAL SECTION.Read in the Section of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women, at the Forty-second Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held at Washington, D. C., May 1891.

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According to Oliver Wendell Holmes, to successfully treat an individual one should begin with the grandfather. The same principle applies to the successful after-treatment of cases of abdominal section. Whenever possible, careful preparatory treatment should be carried out. Nutrition should be improved, when depraved; the enunctories should be made active, especially the bowels and skin. Operation should be rapid, careful and thorough. Diseased, and especially suppurating, structures should receive most careful attention, and unless vital, organs be completely removed. Asepsis in clean operations, and irrigation and drainage in dirty operations, are essentials. Under such conditions, unless operation has been made a last resort, or the vital organs of the individual are seriously crippled, proper after-treatment of cases of abdominal section will insure a successful result quite uniformly. That which is accomplished by after-treatment in cases of abdominal section is principally of a negative character. The object is to protect the