Abdominal and pelvic surgery to-day is practiced by as restless and ambitious a throng as ever fought for fame upon the battlefield. There is probably not a State in the Union which cannot produce at least one man from each county, who has made one or more abdominal sections in the past few years. In many instances the welfare of the patient is only a secondary consideration to them. The prevalence of the mistaken idea that intra-abdominal and pelvic surgery is an exceedingly easy procedure, and the desire for local fame is what induces the large per cent. of these men to undertake the work. But after they have had a few deaths on account of unlooked-for complications, they have learned that opening the abdomen and making the necessary operations is not always easy, as has been so frequently stated by abdominal surgeons. Not a few of these men, to