Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Alexis Carrel, M.D., of the Rockefeller Institute, in collaboration with H. D. Dakin, Ph.D., of the Herter Laboratories, New York, seeking to discover the best means of treating war-wound infections, adopted the "chemiotherapeutic" method. To be successful, it was necessary, according to their views, to choose (1) a suitable antiseptic, which, in degree of concentration used and in length of time it must be applied, would be fatal to microbes but would "not produce obvious damage to the tissue," and (2) a proper surgical technic for the antiseptic treatment of the septic wounds. Carrel and Dehelly have told the story of the evolution and practice of this Carrel-Dakin method in this book, and it has been ably translated from the French by Herbert Child.
Unfortunately the chemical phase of the treatment has received far more attention than the surgical phase, owing, in part,