To burn or sear tissue with heat or chemicals, typically to stop bleeding, remove dead flesh, or sterilize a wound.
From cautery + -ise suffix (British spelling). Comes from Latin cauterare and Greek kauter (burning). The verb form entered English medical vocabulary in the 1500s.
Before electricity made surgery cleaner, cauterising was THE way to control bleeding—armies had special surgeons whose only job was burning wounds to save soldiers' lives. It was crude but it worked.
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