Page 173 - My FlipBook

AGENTS USED FOR STERILIZATION. 171

Nails should be kept short and scrupulously clean. It seems to the
writer that the use of a good potash soap and nail-brush, with bathing the
hands in alcohol, will be amply sufficient unless working on a syphilitic
patient, when more effective methods must be resorted to, and there can
be nothing better than the mode described by Dr. Nancrede.
The conclusions to which the writer has arrived from experience and
study of the subject may be sunmied up briefly as follows :
1. Dipping instruments in an antiseptic fluid previous to operating,
while beneficial, is not sterilization.
2. That boiling with soda is for the dentist the most convenient
means of sterilizing instruments without injury, while the more recently
introduced method of formaldehyd antisepsis is a dry process that does
not rust or injure steel instruments and is also promptly effective.
3. That the ordinary methods used to effect sterilization in surgical
practice are not possible in dentistry, but that every dentist is legally
and morally bound to live as near to the rules of antisepsis as is possi-
ble with the demands of a daily practice.