i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



pyemia, between the bacteria of the local lesion and those in the internal 

 organs, and had observed bacteria within the leucocyte. To us, who 

 view these activities in retrospect, they are phases of a general advance, 

 the culmination of which is common knowledge, but in the early 

 seventies they were merely the non-related efforts of individual workers. 

 Some practical demonstration was necessary to give to the newer type 

 of laboratory work an importance which would impress the profession. 

 Such a demonstration came through Lister's antiseptic treatment of 

 wounds and was followed shortly by the observations of Koch on 

 anthrax, and of Pasteur on vaccination against bacterial disease. 



Lister's first publication concerning his treatment of wounds was 

 in 1867, but it was not until the late seventies that his views were quite 

 generally accepted. In the meantime his methods and their results 

 served to concentrate attention on bacteria and their relation to the 

 diseases of man. He regarded wound infection as putrefaction due to 

 the invasion of the wound by minute microorganisms of the air; a 

 conception which, as he acknowledges in his first publication, was sug- 

 gested by Pasteur's work on fermentation. In a letter to Pasteur in 

 1874 he offers " most cordial thanks for having demonstrated to me the 

 germ theory of putrefaction, and thus furnished me with the principle 

 upon which alone the antiseptic treatment can be carried out." 



His method was to combat this air-borne infection with an anti- 

 septic — carbolic acid. He cleaned a wound by wiping it out with car- 

 bolic acid and then sealed it with lint soaked in this acid. All instru- 

 ments, sponges and dressings coming in contact with the wound or the 

 hands of the operator or assistants, as well as the site of operation, were 

 cleansed in the same way. Also, by means of a vaporizer, carbolic acid 

 was sprayed into the atmosphere about the site of operation. As years 

 passed the details of this ^method changed. AVe now speak of the 

 suppuration of wounds, not of putrefaction ; the carbolic spray has been 

 abandoned and our ideas about sepsis have been modified in several 

 ways, but the principle remains as Lister conceived it. The beneficial 

 results of this new treatment in Lister's hands were immediate, but its 

 general application came slowly. We find Pasteur in 1874 referring to 

 Lister's " marvellous surgical methods " and recommending to the sur- 

 geons of Paris the use of instruments and dressings sterilized by heat. 

 The complete acceptance of Lister's principle would appear to corre- 

 spond to the year 1883, when he was made a baronet. 



The benefits of antisepsis are now so familiar to us, and its use so 

 much a matter of routine, that we cease to wonder at the revolution it 

 brought about in surgery. Some diseases, as hospital gangrene, it has 

 abolished entirely; others as the septic surgical diseases of former days 

 have been reduced almost to nil ; it has robbed the period of child-bearing 

 of one of its chief perils, and has opened to surgery regions and 



