EDITORIAL NOTES.

Foreign Bodies Left in the Abdominal Cavity.  —The abdominal walls and cavity display at times a tolerance to surgical manipulations that sets at naught the preconceptions of all students of the authorities. In one respect, however, this tolerance is not very liberally displayed—when foreign bodies, inclusive of articles used by the surgeon, are left behind in the peritoneal cavity after an operation. But even instances of tolerance in this respect are not unknown, wherethe patient refuses to die even although such an article has been left within the sewed-up wound of a laparotomy. From a Paris letter to the Medical Press and Circular, we learn that Dr. Pilatte presented to the Société de Chirurgie a compress of antiseptic gauze that had been detained in a patient's abdomen for eight months. A laparotomy was done upon this woman in April, 1891, followed for a number of weeks by a fair recovery,