1 68 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



the absolute disappearance of hospital gangrene or of puer- 

 peral fever from the hospitals in which these diseases used 

 to be a curse to the attendants and a frightful menace to 

 the patients? Neither of them were the object of specific 

 treatment, in the sense in which we understand the word 

 now; in neither of them has any " antitoxin" been worked 

 out; in fact, as to puerperal fever, it is well known that 

 more than one bacterium may take part in its production. 

 Ixit in both, the gospel of cleanliness according to bacteri- 

 ological methods has done its work thoroughly, and these 

 diseases have disappeared as a menace to sufferers liable 

 to their attacks because of our knowledge of the bacteria 

 and their methods of action. Cleanliness as it was formerly 

 understood was thoroughly applied, but it was ineffective 

 as compared with the results of to-day, because there was 

 then no conception of what to guard against. It is ridicu- 

 lous to claim, as a well-known English surgeon has done, 

 that his very excellent results in abdominal surgery were 

 due to common sense and cleanliness, and not to the knowl- 

 edge of the bacteria, based upon all the experimentation 

 of recent years. This is the very greatest result of this 

 work, the plainest deduction of all --that properly ap- 

 plied cleanliness -- meaning the exclusion of pathogenic 

 bacteria from wounds makes it possible for any surgi- 

 cal procedure to be carried out, with absolute certainty 

 that no unfortunate results will follow, so far as surgical 

 fevers arc concerned. And what a field has been opened 

 to the surgeon by this fact ! Operative interference of all 

 sorts is justifiable now, and is daily carried out, as was never 

 the case before ; operations are now performed often that 

 were hardly dreamed of not many years ago, and if per- 

 formed, were carried out as a desperate and last resort for 

 the sake of the life of the patient. 



This is mainly due, not to the knowledge that cleanliness 

 is important, but to the knowledge of what cleanliness 



