a dressing was usually a piece of material, sometimes cloth, but the use of cobwebs, dung, leaves and honey have also been described. However, modern dressings include gauzes (which may be impregnated with an agent designed to help sterility or to speed healing), films, gels, foams, hydrocolloids, alginates, hydrogels and polysaccharide pastes, granules and beads. Dressings can be impregnated with antiseptic chemicals, as in boracic lint or where medicinal Castor oil was used in the first surgical dressings

In the 1960s, George Winter published his controversial research on moist healing. Previously, the accepted wisdom was that in order to prevent infection of a wound, the wound should be kept as dry as possible. Winter demonstrated that wounds which were kept moist healed faster than those which were left exposed to the air or covered with traditional dressings.

Ideally, dressings should:

• Control the moisture content, so that the wound stays moist;
• Protect the wound from infection;
• Remove slough;
• Maintain the optimum pH and temperature to encourage healing;