The use of chemotherapeutic agents as an adjunct to operative management of malignant disease is receiving considerable attention in current cancer research. Since the effects of these highly toxic drugs are not entirely limited to neoplastic tissue, however, knowledge of their effects on normal healing of wounds would be valuable. Krementz and associates9 called attention to the decrease in tensile strength of healing wounds following the use of alkylating agents in 1957 and documented this in an experimental study concerning gastrotomy wounds in guinea pigs treated with triethylenemelamine. In many instances, complications after surgical treatment of cancer of the lung may possibly be due to the adjuvant use of mechlorethamine hydrochloride (nitrogen mustard) with resultant deleterious effects on wound healing. The present study was undertaken in order to determine if local and systemic use of mechlorethamine hydrochloride, as followed in the national cooperative adjuvant chemotherapy study for carcinoma of