om left
unsterilized, except the patient and the surgeon; and these are brought
as near to it as is possible without danger to life.

In the first place, the operating-room itself must be like a bath room,
or, more accurately, the inside of a cistern. Walls, floor, and ceiling
are all waterproof and capable of being washed down with a hose. There
must be no casings or cornices of any sort to catch dust; and in the
best appointed hospitals no one is permitted to enter, under any
pretext, whose hands and garments have not been sterilized.

In the second place, everything that is brought into the room for use
in, or during, the operation, is first thoroughly sterilized. The
knives, instruments, and other operative objects are sterilized by
boiling, or by the use of superheated steam; and the towels, dressings,
bandages, sheets, etc., by boiling, baking, or superheated steam. Then
begins the preparation of the surgeon and the nurse. Dressing-rooms are
provided, in which the outer garments are removed, and the hands given
an ordinary wash. Then the scrubbing-room is entered, where, at a series
of basins provided with running hot and cold water, whose faucets are
turned by pressure with the foot so as to avoid any necessity for
touching them with the hand, the hands are thoroughly scrubbed with hot
water, boiled soap, and a boiled nail-brush. Then they are plunged into,
and thoroughly soaked in, some strong antiseptic solution, then washed
again; then plunged into another antiseptic solution, containing some
fat solvent like ether or alcohol, to wash off any dirt that may have
been protected by the natural oil of the skin. Then they are thoroughly
scrubbed with soap and hot water again, to remove all traces of the
antiseptics, most of which are irritating to wounded tissues; then
washed in absolute alcohol, then in boiled or distilled water. Then the
nurse, whose hands are already sterilized, takes out of the original
package in which it came from the sterilizing oven, a linen surgical
gown or suit which covers the operator from neck to toes. A sterilized
linen or cotton cap is placed upon his head and pulled down so that the
scales or germs of any sort may not fall into the wound. Some surgeons
of stout and comfortable habit, who are apt to perspire in the high
temperature of an operating-room, will tie a band of gauze around their
foreheads, to prevent any unexpected drops of perspiration from falling
into the wound; while