332 



Constant 



the patient with it during the operation; 

 then he covered the wound with gauze 

 soaked in carbohc acid. Success was im- 

 mediate; wounds did not develop pus, 

 and the number of deaths after operation 

 decreased considerably. 



But Lister was not wholly satisfied 

 with the method, because the carbolic 

 acid which so successfully killed the 

 bacteria also injured the tissue cells and 

 wounds healed slowly, sometimes not at 

 all. Lister then tried the following: in- 

 stead of sterilizing the wound after the 

 bacteria had settled in it, he tried to make 

 it impossible for bacteria ever to get in. 

 He got rid of bacteria on his instruments 

 by sterilizing them in boiling water, and 

 he operated in a room which was as 

 nearly sterile as he could make it. In- 

 stead of soaking the wound in disinfect- 

 ant, the skin was made sterile before the 

 operation was begun. In other words. 

 Lister developed what is called aseptic 

 surgery instead of antiseptic surgery. 

 Thereafter, surgical wounds usually 

 healed rapidly, and bacterial infection 

 following an operation became the ex- 

 ception instead of the rule. In the thirty 

 odd years since Lister's death, many im- 

 provements have been made in the con- 

 struction of the operating room and in 

 methods of keeping gemis from wounds 

 during and following operations. We 

 owe a great debt of gratitude to men like 

 Lister and Semmelweis, but these dis- 

 coveries would not have been possible 

 had it not been for the painstaking work 

 of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur and 

 their many co-workers. All these men 

 together developed and established the 

 germ theory of disease. See whether you 

 can answer the questions in Exercise 8. 



Care Is Needed for Health unit vi 



The use of drugs. In the early days of 

 history diseases were often treated with 

 herbs. Some of these or their extracts, 

 called drugs, are still in use to give tem- 

 porary relief from pain or fever or other 

 symptoms of disease. But after the dis- 

 covery of the germ theory of disease, 

 physicians attempted to combat the 

 germ and its products rather than to try 

 to treat the symptoms with drugs. 



Before 19 lo about the only chemicals 

 used against bacteria in the body were 

 antiseptics on wounds and quinine 

 which, taken internally, seemed to inter- 

 fere with the growth of the microorgan- 

 ism causing malaria. Then in 19 10 

 Ehrlich discovered "606," a specific 

 chemical which worked against the 

 syphilis organism. This opened up a new 

 field of research and within the last ten 

 or fifteen years the chemical treatment 

 of disease has grown rapidly. 



Venereal diseases. One of the most 

 dangerous of the communicable diseases 

 and one of the most widespread is syphi- 

 lis. The disease comes on slowly. Its first 

 symptom is usually a hamiless looking 

 sore which heals. The disease spreads 

 slowly, ending eventually in the nerv^ous 

 system. Thanks to Paul Ehrlich (1852- 

 191 5), and many research workers since 

 his death, it is possible to cure most cases 

 of the disease by use of chemicals con- 

 taining arsenic and bismuth. More re- 

 cently, penicillin has been found effective 

 in curing many cases. If treatment is be- 

 gun soon enough, most cases of syphilis 

 can be cured. The number of deaths 

 from syphilis in the United States has 

 been verv much reduced. 



The disease may be spread from one 

 parent to the other and thus to the un- 



