WILLIAM TOWNSEND PORTER 85 



prick was then "a door open to death." Surgeons hesi- 

 tated to operate. Opening the abdomen was called mur- 

 der, so frequent and so fatal was infection in this operation. 

 In the admirable " Life of Pasteur," for which we thank 

 M. Rene Vallery-Radot, it is stated 1 that the Assistance 

 Publique, hoping to overcome the almost invariably fatal 

 results of ovariotomy in the hospitals, " hired an isolated 

 house in the Avenue de Meudon, a salubrious spot near 

 Paris. In 1863 ten women in succession were sent to that 

 house. The neighboring inhabitants watched those ten 

 patients entering the house, and a short time afterward 

 their ten coffins being taken away. In their terrified igno- 

 rance they called that house the House of Crime." 



In the Franco-Prussian war lives were twice risked - 

 once in the field, again in the hospital. The needle-gun 

 filled the wards ; but gangrene emptied them. " During 

 the siege of Paris, in the Grand Hotel, which had been 

 turned into an ambulance, Nelaton, in despair at the sight 

 of the death of almost every patient who had been operated 

 on, declared that he who should conquer purulent infection 

 would deserve a golden statue." 2 



Even more sad than these perils of war were the losses 

 in child-birth. " In the year 1872 puerperal fever de- 

 stroyed twenty-eight women of one hundred and twenty-six 

 who were confined in the Bellevue Hospital. The service 

 was then broken up, and a great outcry arose against 

 ' tainted hospitals.' " 3 



These scourges of the hospital and the camp are gone. 

 They have been conquered by the genius of Pasteur and by 

 the penetrating mind of Lister. Many of Pasteur's experi- 

 ments were performed upon living animals. His germ 



1 Life of Pasteur, translated by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire, vol. ii. p. 16. 



2 Ibid., p. 18. 



3 The Science and Art of Midwifery, by W. T. Lusk, New York, 1883. 

 p. 640. 



