The result has been a complete revolution in surgery. As the methods have become better understood and more thoroughly adopted, the instances of secondary troubles following surgical wounds have become less and less frequent until they have practically disappeared in all simple cases. To-day the surgeon recognises that when inflammatory troubles of this sort follow simple surgical wounds it is a testimony to his carelessness. The skilful surgeon has learned that with the precautions which he is able to take to-day he has to fear only the direct effect of the shock of the wound and its subsequent direct influence; but secondary surgical fevers, blood poisoning, and surgical gangrene need not be taken into consideration at all. Indeed, the modern surgeon hardly knows what surgical gangrene is, and bacteriologists have had practically no chance to study it. Secondary infections have largely disappeared, and the surgeon is concerned simply with the effect of the wound itself, and the power of the body to withstand the shock and subsequently heal the wound. With these secondary troubles no longer to disturb him, the surgeon has become more and more bold. Operations formerly not dreamed of are now performed without hesitation. In former years an operation which opened the abdominal cavity was not thought possible, or at least it was so nearly certain to result fatally that it was resorted to only on the last extremity; while to-day such operations are hardly regarded as serious. Even brain surgery is becoming more and more common. Possibly our surgeons are passing too far to the other extreme, and, feeling their power of performing so many operations without inconvenience or danger, they are using the knife in cases where it would be better to leave Nature to herself for her own healing. But, be this as it may, it is impossible to estimate the amount of suffering prevented and the number of lives saved by the mastery of the secondary inflammatory troubles which used to follow surgical wounds.