A slight cut with a clean knife, or other instrument, into which no dirt has been rubbed, will often require no other dressing than its own blood-scab. If, however, as oftener happens, you cannot be sure of the cleanness of the knife, tool, or nail, hold the wound under running water from a pump or tap (this is not germ-free, but practically never contains pus-germs), until the wound has been thoroughly washed out, wiping any gravel or dirt out of the cut with soft rags which have been recently washed, or baked in the oven; then dry with a small piece of linen, or white goods, put on a dressing of absorbent cotton such as can be purchased for a few cents an ounce at any drug store. Absorbent or surgical cotton makes a good dressing, because it both sucks up any fluids which might leak out of the wound, and forms a mesh-filter through which no germs can penetrate. It is not advisable to use sticking-plaster for any but the most trivial wounds, and seldom even for these, for several reasons. First, because its application usually involves licking it to make it stick; second, because it must cover a sufficient amount of skin on either side of the wound to give it firm grip, and this area of skin contains a considerable number of both sweat-ducts and hair-follicles, which will keep on discharging under the plaster, producing a moist and unhealthy condition of the lips of the wound. Moreover, these sweat-ducts and hair-follicles will, as we have seen, frequently contain white staphylococci, which are at times capable of setting up a low grade of inflammation in the wound. A wound always heals better if its surfaces and coverings can be kept dry. This is why cotton makes such an ideal dressing, since it permits the free evaporation of moisture, a moderate access of air, and yet keeps out all germs. If the cut or scratch is of any depth or seriousness whatever, or the knife, tool, or other instrument be dirty, or if any considerable amount of street-dust or garden-soil has got into the wound, then it is, by all means, advisable to go to a physician, have the wound thoroughly cleaned on antiseptic principles, and put up in antiseptic dressing. A single treatment of this sort, in a comparatively trifling wound which has become in any way contaminated, may save weeks of suffering and disability, and often danger of life, and will in eight cases out of ten shorten the time of healing from forty to sixty per cent. The rapidity with which a wound in a reasonably healthy individual, cleaned and dressed on modern surgical principles, will heal, is almost incredible, until it has actually been seen.