380 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



surmised that this suppuration is due to germs from the air, from 

 the surgeon's hands, from instruments, etc., and acting on this 

 theory proposed to prevent such wound diseases by destroying the 

 germs in the air and upon the wound by some " antiseptic," i.e. some 

 substance that should prevent sepsis (putrefaction) or suppuration. 

 Carbolic acid (phenol) had recently been introduced into com- 

 merce and was highly recommended as a deodorant. This Lister 

 used, and with results so satisfactory that his antiseptic surgery 

 soon became famous. It has since given way to aseptic surgery, 

 which differs from it simply in preventing wound-infection rather 

 than in treating it after it has occurred. In battle-fields antiseptic 

 surgery must still be used, since the work of the surgeon is done 

 only after the wound has been made. Antiseptic and aseptic 

 surgery are among the most priceless blessings of the race and 

 among the greatest triumphs of nineteenth century science. 



One serious objection stood in the way of the establishment and 

 acceptance of the germ theory; viz., the possibility that germs 

 were the consequence and not the cause of fermentation, putre- 

 faction, or disease ; and this objection w r as frequently urged. In 

 1876, however, it was met and overcome by Robert Koch, a 

 district physician of Wollstein, in Prussia. By the use of the 

 methods of Pasteur, Koch succeeded in making a series of suc- 

 cessive cultivations of the microbes of anthrax (splenic fever, 

 charbon, or malignant pustule) in such a way that at the end of 

 his experiment he had a pure culture of the microbes in question. 

 Obviously, if with these he could produce the disease by infecting 

 a susceptible animal or a wound, they must be its cause and not 

 its consequence. In this he was completely successful, thereby 

 establishing beyond all possible perad venture the truth of the 

 germ theory. 



RISE OF BACTERIOLOGY AND PARASITOLOGY. The labors of 

 Pasteur, Lister, Koch and others soon led to the birth of a new 

 science, Bacteriology of which the first fruit was the dis- 

 covery in rapid succession by Koch and his pupils of the hitherto 

 unknown germs of some of the worst and most mysterious dis- 

 eases afflicting the human race ; the bacillus of typhoid fever in 



