746 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



make frequent tests to ascertain how well these filter beds are 

 accomplishing their purpose. In France the Pasteur-Chamberland 

 filter is largely used, and recent reports indicate that it has been 

 instrumental in effecting a great reduction in the rate of mor- 

 tality from typhoid fever, especially among the French soldiers in 

 certain parts of the country where this disease a few years since 

 caused a considerable mortality, and where the civil population, 

 not using the filters, still furnishes many victims to this disease. 



The exact knowledge which we now possess with reference to 

 the micro-organisms which are the cause of erysipelas, puerperal 

 fever, septicaemia, wound infection, etc., has also led to the em- 

 ployment of intelligent measures of prophylaxis. The brilliant 

 success which has attended the carrying out of these modern 

 antiseptic and aseptic methods in surgical and obstetrical prac- 

 tice are too well known to call for extended remark. But some 

 statistics relating to this branch of our subject may serve to im- 

 press the matter upon the minds of those who have not fully 

 appreciated the saving of life which has resulted from the employ- 

 ment of methods based upon a knowledge of the usual modes of 

 wound infection and the micro-organisms to which such infection 

 is due. Lister, the distinguished pioneer in the employment of 

 antiseptics in surgical practice, reports that during the years 1864, 

 1865, and 18(36, before he resorted to the use of antiseptics, the 

 mortality in his surgical cases exceeded forty-five per cent, 

 largely from septic complications. During the period from 1871 

 to 1876, in a total of 453 surgical cases treated by him with strict 

 antiseptic precautions, the mortality from such complications 

 was only 0"36 per cent. 



The German surgeon Volkmann reports that prior to the intro- 

 duction of antiseptic methods the mortality from compound frac- 

 tures in his practice was forty per cent. After adopting Lister's 

 methods he had 135 successive cases of compound fracture with- 

 out a death from septic causes ; two deaths only occurred out of 

 the whole number of cases ; one of these was the result of de- 

 lirium tremens and the other of fatty embolism of the lungs. 



Brignot, a French surgeon, reports that in French hospitals 

 the mortality from major surgical operations before the introduc- 

 tion of antiseptic methods was 52*5 per cent, and that since it has 

 been reduced to a little less than eleven per cent. In a series of 

 736 cases of compound fracture collected by Prof. William White, 

 of Philadelphia, all of which occurred before the introduction of 

 antiseptic methods, the mortality was forty per cent. In a second 

 series of similar cases in which these methods were employed the 

 mortality was only four per cent. Dennis, of New York, has 

 reported a series of 516 cases of compound fracture without a 

 single death from septic causes. 



