A troublesome experience with buried sutures has defeated the best efforts of many excellent surgeons in their endeavor to separately approximate the different layers in closing abdominal wounds. With a desire to overcome this difficulty, and yet to accomplish all that may be done with buried sutures, I began about two years ago the exclusive use of silkworm gut in closing, not alone abdominal wounds, but in suturing all incisions I have had occasion to make in doing a general line of surgery. In closing an abdominal wound in the medium line it is my habit to first approximate the peritoneum with a silkworm gut introduced in the same manner as a sub-cuticular suture, and then to bring both ends through the integument near the extremities of the incision. This permits of its ready removal any time from the third to the sixth day, according to the pleasure of the