Penetrating wounds of the abdomen occur with considerable frequency in civil as well as in military practice, and until recently have been the most uniformly fatal of all injuries. As much of our knowledge of this class of injuries has been derived from the experience of the civil war, in preantiseptic times, so we may expect to revise or to confirm our views on this subject by the experience of the surgeons now engaged with the armies in the far East, when they shall have the opportunity to collate their experiences. My experience in these cases is confined entirely to those injuries occurring in civil life, in which the wounds have been inflicted by pistol or rifle balls or with knives and scissors. The larger number of these injuries are inflicted by bullets, while a large minority are due to stabs. As a rule, the traumatisms resulting from gunshot wounds