piece of
linen, or white goods, put on a dressing of absorbent cotton such as can
be purchased for a few cents an ounce at any drug store. Absorbent or
surgical cotton makes a good dressing, because it both sucks up any
fluids which might leak out of the wound, and forms a mesh-filter
through which no germs can penetrate.

It is not advisable to use sticking-plaster for any but the most trivial
wounds, and seldom even for these, for several reasons. First, because
its application usually involves licking it to make it stick; second,
because it must cover a sufficient amount of skin on either side of the
wound to give it firm grip, and this area of skin contains a
considerable number of both sweat-ducts and hair-follicles, which will
keep on discharging under the plaster, producing a moist and unhealthy
condition of the lips of the wound. Moreover, these sweat-ducts and
hair-follicles will, as we have seen, frequently contain white
staphylococci, which are at times capable of setting up a low grade of
inflammation in the wound. A wound always heals better if its surfaces
and coverings can be kept dry. This is why cotton makes such an ideal
dressing, since it permits the free evaporation of moisture, a moderate
access of air, and yet keeps out all germs.

If the cut or scratch is of any depth or seriousness whatever, or the
knife, tool, or other instrument be dirty, or if any considerable amount
of street-dust or garden-soil has got into the wound, then it is, by
all means, advisable to go to a physician, have the wound thoroughly
cleaned on antiseptic principles, and put up in antiseptic dressing. A
single treatment of this sort, in a comparatively trifling wound which
has become in any way contaminated, may save weeks of suffering and
disability, and often danger of life, and will in eight cases out of ten
shorten the time of healing from forty to sixty per cent. The rapidity
with which a wound in a reasonably healthy individual, cleaned and
dressed on modern surgical principles, will heal, is almost incredible,
until it has actually been seen.

The principal danger of garden-soil or street-dust in a wound is not so
much from pus-germs, though these may be present, as from another
"bug"--the tetanus or lockjaw bacillus. This deadly organism lives in
the alimentary canal of the horse, and hence is to be found in any dirt
or soil which contains horse manure. It is, fortunately, not very
common, or widely spread, but e