THE ANAEROBIC TREATMENT 



OF WOUNDS 



A layman, if he has to address a purely medical 

 audience on a medical subject, labours under an 

 obvious handicap, and I have been glad, therefore, 

 to avail myself of the opportunity of these lectures to 

 lay out for wider reception the matter of some investi- 

 gations carried out at Reading War Hospital, which 

 will, I think, have at least a topical interest for 

 most people. 



While the war has closed many avenues of advance- 

 ment, and academic studies languish, it has opened 

 many other roads which might have remained un- 

 trodden for long enough, and has proved an enor- 

 mous stimulus to certain aspects of knowledge. 

 Naturally this is the case in a superlative degree with 

 medicine. War conditions and war needs in surgery 

 are almost entirely foreign to civilian practice, espe- 

 cially in regard to the extensive nature of the in- 

 juries, their gross infection, and the chance which 

 sepsis often gets of laying hold of the patient's sys- 

 tem before thorough treatment becomes possible. To 

 face such circumstances the civilian surgeon comes 

 qualis ab incepto. He has to learn his job anew, and 

 out of that fiery trial of strength, in which all accepted 

 methods have been put to fighting proof, it is not 

 surprising that things novel and unexpected should 

 come to light. 



Two schools of wound treatment have hitherto 



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