12. The treatment of simple gunshot or flesh wounds should be, under ordinary circumstances, as simple as themselves. Nothing should be applied but a piece of linen or lint, wetted with cold water; this may be retained by a strip of sticking-plaster, or any other thing applicable for the purpose of keeping the injured part covered. A compress of linen, or other similar substance, moistened with cold or iced water when procurable, will be useful; and a few inches of a linen bandage may be sewed on, to prevent the compress from changing its position during sleep. When the wound becomes tender, a little oil, lard, or simple ointment may be placed over it. A roller, as a surgical application, is useless, if not injurious. At the first and second battles in Portugal, every wound had a roller applied over it; it soon became stiff, bloody, and dirty. They did no good, were for the most part cut off with scissors, and thus rendered useless. When really wanted, at a later period, they were not forthcoming. An advancing army cannot, and ought not to carry casks full of rollers into the field; and the apothecary-general had better have instead, two casks or boxes full of good wax candles; for, although every regimental surgeon ought to have four in his panniers, kept as carefully for emergencies as his capital instruments, they will require from time to time to be replaced. No roller should be more than two inches and a quarter wide, and made of good, strong, coarse linen, very much, in fact, the reverse of the rollers which have until lately been supplied to the army. 13. Cold or iced water may be used as long as cold is grateful to the sufferer. When it ceases to be so, it should be exchanged for warm, applied in any convenient way which modern improvements have suggested, whether by piline, gutta-percha, oiled silk, etc. An evaporating poultice may be used in private life, but no poultices should be permitted in a military hospital, until the principal surgeon is satisfied they are necessary. They are generally cloaks for negligence, and sure precursors of amputation in all serious injuries of bones and joints. They are properly used to alleviate pain, stiffness, swelling, the uneasiness arising from cold, and to encourage the commencing or impeded action of the vessels toward the formation of matter. As soon as the effect intended has been obtained, the poultice should be abandoned, and recourse again had to water, hot or cold, with compress and bandage. I was in the habit of calling a poultice when misapplied a _cover-slut_.