THE SURGERY OF CAMP WIKOFF.

Abstract

ABSCESSES. We would naturally take it for granted that among the returning soldiers from Cuba, owing to their greatly debilitated condition, suppurative affections in different forms, and affecting various tissues and organs, would furnish a rich and interesting material for the surgical ward of the General Hospital. The sources of infection were many, and the resistance of the tissues to pathogenic microbes in most of the men who returned was at low ebb. A good share of the surgical work consisted in incising and draining abscesses, some of them of enormous size. In the treatment of all of these cases, owing to the pronounced anemia and great weakness, special precautions were resorted to to prevent the loss of even as much as a teaspoonful of blood in performing the operations. In abscesses in the anal region the Paquelin cautery was usually used in preference to the knife, in laying open