Gauze upon the granulations will injure the tissue still more, since its filaments entangle the granulations, which on removal of the dressing are broken off in small fragments. The device which prevents this injury is a covering of very soft gutta-percha tissue or Lister’s protective silk. But the surgeon who practices this let-alone method, though backed by sound pathological knowledge and therapeutic principles, will not escape the censure of the family or the nurse, and too often allows his sense of neatness to take precedence of his more sober sense founded upon pathological knowledge. This “neglect” is particularly desirable when epithelium is shooting across the wound. These hyaline cells are so extremely delicate that the slightest touch will damage or remove them to the detriment of the healing process. The dressing on a suppurating wound should be allowed to remain five or six days. Though the ignorant may find fault with the surgeon for such temporizing, he must insist upon it for the patient’s well-being. Another illustration is drawn from the operation for appendicitis, in which we have adhesions, pus, and wide infection. Here new pathological factors are met with. The peritoneum throngs with polynuclear leucocytes which are engaged in destroying the bacteria. If time be given these faithful guards to mass themselves in the peritoneal lymph channels, they will prevent the extension of the peritonitis from this point. The surgeon, having evacuated the pus, removed the appendix, and inserted the drainage apparatus, is tempted, because of its bad smell, to wash out the wound. Such a measure would not only give the patient detrimental annoyance, but would inflict a new traumatism upon the tissues. “This traumatism calls out an unnecessary number of leucocytes, and an unnecessary degree of reactive inflammation ensues. If, on the other hand, the colon bacilli are allowed to increase, they will at first produce a very foul odor to the discharge, but in three or four days we will usually find streptococci abundant, and perhaps displacing all other bacteria.” In such cases, leave the drainage apparatus in place and “neglect” the wound. “Repair and destruction of bacteria will go on much better if we leave the wound alone, after having removed the principal mass—the contents of the abscess cavity.”