The best assistant is one who has acquired a methodical and regular manipulation, a result dependent upon constant individual association; such a one is practically invaluable for the skillful performance of plastic surgery. He becomes not only familiar with the one thing, but cultivates a ready knowledge of the arrest of hemorrhage by digital compression when hemostatic forceps would hinder the ease of work, besides cultivating a happy manner of holding retractors or spreading the edges of the incisions with the free hand. As in most of these operations hemorrhage cannot be controlled by the so-called bloodless method. The assistant must control the constant oozing by the gentle pressure of the sponge quickly applied at short intervals. When the sponges are squeezed out in salt solution, as hot as the hand will bear comfortably, capillary oozing is more readily overcome. STERILIZATION OF DRESSINGS All dressings to be used in covering wounds, _post operatio_, or otherwise, must be as scrupulously clean and free from infection as the hands and the instruments of the operator. This is done by means of sterilization by dry heat or steam under pressure. For all minor cases, small apparatuses only are needed. They are usually made of copper, often nickel-plated, and so constructed as to contain a lower perforated instrument tray and another, placed above it, for dressings. The two are fitted into an outer copper receptacle with snugly fitting cover. A folding stand is furnished upon which this arrangement is placed, and an alcohol lamp with asbestos wick furnishes the heating power. The lower tray is covered with water which, by boiling, fills the upper compartment with steam evenly distributed and with sufficient pressure to accomplish sterilization in from thirty to sixty minutes. Metal hooks are provided with which the trays can be removed. A complete and compact outfit, as designed by Willy Meyer, is shown in Fig. 13. In the above sterilizer, or in those of similar type, there is naturally more or less saturation of the dressings and the possibility, in the event of the entire conversion of the water contained therein into steam, of injuring the instruments by excessive heat. To overcome this defect the Wallace sterilizer may be advantageously employed. [Illustration: FIG. 13.—WILLY MEYER STERILIZER.] [Illustration: FIG. 14.—WALLACE STERILIZER.] =Wallace Sterilizer.=—Its chief feature is the addition of a reservoir fitting with the separated sterilizer into the outer body. See Fig. 14. This reservoir automatically regulates the water and steam supply. It is filled with water and inserted into the compartment provided for and adjoining the sterilizer. Through an opening in the bottom the water is permitted to escape into the sterilizer until the bottom of the latter is covered to a depth of ⅛ inch. As the heat is applied from the alcohol lamp this film of water is rapidly converted into steam.