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To the Editor.—Dr. Gaston's letter was referred to Dr. Vecchione, who, in turn, conferred with the Becton, Dickinson Company about the thickness of that portion of the No. 15 Bard-Parker knife blade used by him to assess graft thickness.
Dr. Gaston, indeed, spotted the error. Instead of 0.17×10−3 cm thickness, as given in the Archives, it should have been 3.6×10−2 cm since the blade thickness will vary between 0.0368 and 0.0394 cm (0.0145 and 0.0394 inches) in both the stainless steel and carbon blades.
But, in the words of another physician, Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The brightest blade grows dim with rust.