Extensive third degree burns are always very serious injuries and are often lethal. Much of the resultant morbidity and mortality is due to infection originating in the burned tissue. The irreparably damaged ischemic skin is highly susceptible to infection and this is compounded by the lowered "defenses" of the severely burned patient. Although local and systemic chemotherapy has lowered deaths from septicemia, the incidence of severe burn wound infection is still high and morbidity still too prolonged. Recovery and return of function is contingent to a large degree on the earliest safe removal of burn eschar and skin grafting. So long as dead skin is present, so long as the granulation area is unhealed, the possibility of serious infection, local and systemic, exist. Because spontaneous sloughing of the deeply burned skin generally requires 21-35 days, early surgical excision of the eschar using the usual "cold" saclpel and skin grafting (homografting and autografting) have been advocated. Where feasible this approach is good, but when the deep burn is extensive, such excision is a formidable procedure involving prolonged anesthesia, considerable blood loss and replacement, and is therefore uncommonly practiced in that group of patient who could profit most from prompt removal of the deeply burned skin, i.e., patients with very extensive deep burns. Accordingly, we are investigating by in vitro and in vivo (animals and patients) techniques (biochemical, biological, microbiologic, pathologic and clinical): (A) the use of a CO2 laser for the prompt excision of third degree burns, with the view that blood loss can be minimized by this technique and, at the same time, cause minima damage to the underlying tissue so that immediate skin grafting can be carried out successfully, and (b) the use of chemical (enzymatic and non-enzymatic) debriding agents alone and in various combinations, with and without local chemotherapy, with the view that anesthesia and surgical excision can be avoided, blood loss minimized, and prompt skin grafting possible.