At this time, when the attention of the medical profession is so exclusively engaged in the perfection and multiplication of methods and means for the doing of aseptic and antiseptic surgery, we are prone to neglect the study and consideration of the less attractive factors of successful work; and, perhaps, overenthused by the many triumphs of modern surgery, we may at times forget that Nature is still the Great Restorer, and that only from a study of her ways and means of combating disease can we learn how best to assist her.
The special and urgent need of pursuing these less popular lines of investigation must be apparent, however, to those who take the time to study and determine the causes of our present mortality and unsatisfactory results in the intraperitoneal surgery; for here our deaths—barring those from malignant disease—are commonly due to the presence of infection in a region