244 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



Pasteur had insisted upon this fact, and also pointed out 

 that the fermentation was prevented by the presence of 

 boracic acid. It was therefore proposed that in cases of 

 operations on the bladder, the parts should be irri- 

 gated with a 3 or 4 per cent, solution of boracic acid. 

 Mr. Guyon who had carried out this treatment at Pasteur's 

 suggestion obtained marvellous results. In 1865, as 

 already noted, Lister, then Professor of Surgery in the 

 University of Glasgow, commenced his work on the 

 antiseptic treatment of wounds. In 1874, five years after 

 he had been called upon to occupy the Chair of Clinical 

 Surgery in the University of Edinburgh, he wrote to 

 Pasteur : "It gives me pleasure to think that you will read 

 with some interest what I have written about an organism 

 which you were the first to study in your memoir on lactic 

 fermentation. I do not know whether you read the British 

 Medical Journal ; if so, you will from time to time have 

 seen accounts of the antiseptic system which for the last 

 nine years I have been trying to bring to perfection. 

 Allow me to take this opportunity of sending you my most 

 cordial thanks, for having, by your brilliant researches, 

 demonstrated to me the truth of the germ theory of putre- 

 faction, thus giving me the only principle which could lead 

 to a happy end, the antiseptic system." Surgery was 

 started on the path which has converted it from a mere 

 handicraft to a noble art and a living science ; but medicine 

 had not yet been established in the same way although 

 numerous observers (among them, as Tyndall points out, 

 Dr. William Budd) indicated that the specific epidemic and 

 epizootic diseases were due to the action of seeds or germs 

 which cannot originate spontaneously, but which must be 

 " bred true " from pre-existing organisms which " are only 

 propagated now by the law of continuous succession". 



This brings us to the question of " anthrax," a blood 

 disease, extremely fatal to animals, and often attacking the 

 human subject. It is sometimes stated that Pasteur proved 

 the causal nexus between the bacillus anthracis and anthrax, 

 but although his work undoubtedly stimulated others to 

 investigate the subject, and to investigate it successfully, 



