RESEARCH IN MEDICINE n 



domestic methods of canning and preserving solid and fluid foods are 

 based on the laboratory experiments of Pasteur one obtains an adequate 

 idea of the importance of his observations and likewise appreciates his 

 satisfaction at the practical application of his methods. 



As the silkworm problem began to clear up, Pasteur's thoughts 

 turned more and more to the etiology of the acute infectious diseases of 

 man and animals and their experimental study. This is shown in his 

 appeal to the government (1867) for a laboratory. In this appeal he 

 refers to the advisability of investigating splenic fever and asks. " How 

 can researches be attempted on gangrene, virus or inoculations, with- 

 out a building suitable for the housing of animals?" and in 1871, in his 

 book on beer, with the diseases of which he had busied himself, we again 

 find a reference to the possibility of the disease of man and animals 

 being due to microorganisms. Here again it is evident that he was 

 influenced by the idea of microorganisms invisibly introduced into fer- 

 mentable fluids, for in this connection he says, " it is impossible not to 

 be pursued by the thought that similar acts may, must, take place in 

 animals and in man " ; but without experimental proof he refused to go 

 further. 



Pasteur's attack on animal diseases was, however, delayed, first by a 

 cerebral hemorrhage in 1868 which left him partly paralyzed, and then 

 by the Franco-Prussian war which interrupted all scientific efforts in 

 Paris. 



Here it is well to pause a moment to consider the attitude of the 

 medical profession towards the theory which was beginning to take 

 shape as the " germ theory." The following decade was to see the 

 bacterial etiology of several important diseases established, Lister's 

 practise of antisepsis in surgery quite generally accepted, and the 

 principle of specific vaccine treatment demonstrated. To-day no phase 

 of medicine is so well understood by the world at large as that of 

 bacteriological principles and aims. Germs and sera, prophylaxis and 

 quarantine, antisepsis and pasteurization, are matters of common knowl- 

 edge and of ordinary conversation, but it is difficult for one unfamiliar 

 with pre-bacteriology days to appreciate the views which had to be 

 combated only forty years ago. A brief glance at the conditions in 1873 

 may therefore give you a better appreciation of the events of the suc- 

 ceeding decade. If it is necessary to fix the period, let me remind you 

 that 1873 was the year the University of California removed to its 

 present site. 



The Franco-Prussian war had come to a close. Surgeons remem- 

 bered that though soldiers were killed in battle by tens and hundreds, 

 they died of surgical diseases by thousands. 



In the hospitals surgical sepsis ran rampant. Secondary hemorrhage, erysip- 

 elas, pyemia and "hospital gangrene" were endemic. Sometimes wards, wings 



