Nearly every month a new antiseptic is presented to the medical profession, each claiming to outdo all its predecessors and to be perfect in all its attainments.
But experiments have proved most of them to have one or more obnoxious qualities that greatly interfere with their usefulness in the sphere for which they have been recommended.
One, if used in sufficient strength to become a true antiseptic, is found to be a local irritant.
Another corrodes the instruments and unless great care is used will poison both the patient and the operator.
A third is accompanied by an odor so pungent and disagreeable that few patients will submit to it, and the usefulness of still another is greatly lessened by the staining to hands and clothing that results from its use.
All of the earlier antiseptics were handicapped by their poisonous qualities, and consequently oould only be used to a