tives).

Platinum loop.

Aluminium "spreader."

Grease pencil.

Sterile capillary pipettes (Fig. 13, a).

Sterile glass capsules, large and small.

Cover-slips or slides.

Bottles of fixing fluid (_vide_ page 114) for pieces of tissue intended
for sectioning.

1. Place the various instruments, forceps, scissors, scalpels, etc.,
needed for the autopsy inside the steriliser and sterilise by boiling
for ten minutes; then open the steriliser, raise the tray from the
interior and rest it crosswise on the edges.

2. Heat the searing irons to redness in a separate gas stove.

[Illustration: FIG. 197.--Apparatus for post-mortem examination, animal
on board.]

3. Drench the fur (or feathers) with lysol solution, 2 per cent. This
serves the twofold purpose of preventing the hairs from flying about and
entering the body cavities during the autopsy, and of rendering
innocuous any vermin that may be present on the animal.

[Illustration: FIG. 198.--Searing iron.]

4. Examine the cadaver carefully. Recollect that laboratory animals are
not always hardy; death may be due to exposure to heat or cold, to
starvation or over- or improper feeding or to the attack of rats--and
not to the bacterial infection.

5. Fasten the body of the animal, ventral surface upward (unless there
is some special reason for having the dorsum exposed), out on a board
by means of copper nails driven through the extremities.

6. With sterile forceps and scalpel incise the skin in the middle line
from the top of the sternum to the pubes. Make other incisions at right
angles to the first out to the axillae and groins, and reflect the skin
in two lateral flaps. (Place the now infected instruments on the board
by the side of the body or support them on a porcelain knife rest.)

~Seat of Inoculation.~--

7. Inspect the seat of inoculation. If any local lesion is visible, sear
its exposed surface and with the platinum loop, remove material from the
deeper parts to make tube and surface plate cultivations and cover-slip
preparations.

Collect specimens of pus or other exudation in capillary pipettes for
subsequent examination.

8. Inspect the neighbouring lymphatic glands and endeavour to trace the
path of the virus.

9. Sear the whole of the exposed surface of the thorax with the searing
irons.

~Pleural Cavity.~--

10. Divide the ribs on either side of the sternum and remove a
rectangular portion of the anterior chest wall with ster