BEFORE AND AFTER LISTER 173 



abandoned it. For me it changed surgery from Purgatory 

 to Paradise. 



But the reception given to his paper at our congress 

 was lything but enthusiastic. The only surgeon who 

 practically accepted Lister's method was that excellent 

 .St. Louis surgeon, John T. Hodgen. But so hazy were 

 the general ideals of bacteria that in his own paper Hod- 

 gen speaks only of "germs" and "germinal matter" and 

 had no idea of bacteriology as we know it, for the science, 

 and even its name, did not yet exist. 



In the discussion of Hodgen's paper Hewson advocated 

 his then well-known views on the value of dry earth as an 

 "antiseptic." Canniff of Toronto rejected in toto the 

 germ theory of putrefaction. Frank Hamilton, of New 

 York, while claiming extraordinarily good results from 

 the open-air treatment and the warm-water treatment and 

 other rival methods, "damned with faint praise" the an- 

 tiseptic method. Kinloch, of Charleston, took the same 

 attitude; Carpenter, of Pottsville, a Civil War surgeon, 

 advocated chlorine in septic cases. Others sang paeans 

 in praise of "perfect cleanliness" and said they "used both 

 carbolic and salicylic acids, but not for the purpose of 

 excluding germs." In the discussion on Lister's paper, 

 Van Buren, of New York, doubted the safety of the 

 spray in hernia and abdominal sections and Satterthwaite, 

 of New York, rejected the germ theory of putrefaction. 



In 1877 Girard, of the U. S. Army, 4 became the en- 

 thusiastic supporter of Listerism. 



In 1880 Markoe, of New York, while admitting the fine 

 results of Listerism, spoke of "its somewhat arrogant 

 pretension to be the true and only gospel of the surgery 

 of wounds." 5 



In 1882 Listerism was again discussed in the American 

 Surgical Association. Briggs, of Nashville, endorsed Lis- 

 ter's method as "an epoch in surgery." Yet so limited was 



* Circular No. 3, Surgeon General's Office, August 20, 1877. 

 5 Amer. Jour. Med. Sci, LXXIX., 1880, p. 305. 



