248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY. 



proved completely successful as to what may be termed its com- 

 mercial object, but that, though it concerned only a humble worm, it 

 laid the foundation of an entirely new system and method of research 

 into the nature and causes of a large class of diseases in man and the 

 higher animals, of which we are now only beginning to see the impor- 

 tant issues. 



Among the most immediately productive of its results may be 

 accounted the " antiseptic surgery " of Professor Lister, of which the 

 principle is the careful exclusion of living bacteria and other germs 

 alike from the natural internal cavities of the body and from such as 

 are formed by disease, whenever these may be laid open by accident 

 or may have to be opened surgically. This exclusion is effected by 

 the judicious use of carbolic acid, which kills the germs without doing 

 any mischief to the patient ; and the saving of lives, of limbs, and of 

 severe suffering, already brought about by this method, constitutes 

 in itself a glorious triumph alike to the scientific elaborator of the 

 germ-doctrine and to the scientific surgeon by whom it has been thus 

 applied. 



A far wider range of study, however, soon opened itself. The 

 revival by Dr. Farr of the doctrine of zymosis (fermentation), long 

 ago suggested by the sagacity of Robert Boyle, and practically taken 

 up in the middle of the last century by Sir John Pringle (the most 

 scientific physician of his time), as the expression of the effect pro- 

 duced in the blood by the introduction of a specific poison (such as 

 that of small-pox, measles, scarlatina, cholera, typhus, etc.), had nat- 

 urally directed the attention of thoughtful men to the question (often 

 previously raised speculatively) whether these specific poisons are 

 not really organic germs, each kind of which, a real contagium vivum, 

 when sown in the circulating fluid, produces a definite zymosis of its 

 own, in the course of which the poison is reproduced with large in- 

 crease, exactly after the manner of yeast in a fermenting wort. Pas- 

 teur's success brought this question to the front as one not to talk 

 about but to work at, the lead being taken, I believe, by M. Chau- 

 veau, the distinguished Professor of Medicine at Lyons, but other 

 investigators (among them our own Professor Burdon-Sanderson) fol- 

 lowed closely in his wake. Pasteur's own attention seems at that 

 time to have been chiefly directed to what may be termed the pathol- 

 ogy of beer, wine, and vinegar, and to the fight he had still to main- 

 tain with the advocates of abiogenesis. I shall not stop to describe 

 the valuable improvements he has introduced into the manufacture of 

 alcoholic and acetous liquors, with a view of preventing those injuri- 

 ous fermentations which often interfere with the normal processes, 

 and sometimes ruin their results, but shall keep to the object I have 

 specially in view, the exposition of those more recent contributions to 

 "preventive medicine," which constitute him the greatest public bene- 

 factor of his time. 



