DAWN OF A NEW ERA IN MEDICINE 183 



seat: 'What causes the epidemic is nothing of the 

 sort; it is the doctor and his staff that carry the 

 microbe from an infected woman to a healthy- 

 one.' And as the speaker replied that he feared 

 that one would never find the microbe, Pasteur 

 went to the blackboard and drew a picture of the 

 chain-like organism, saying, 'There, that is what 

 it is like!' His conviction was so strong that he 

 could not keep himself from expressing it for- 

 cibly. It would be difficult now to describe the 

 state of surprise and even stupefaction into which 

 he would throw the doctors and students when, at 

 the hospital, with a simplicity and assurance which 

 appeared disconcerting in a man who was entering 

 a lying-in ward for the first time, he criticized the 

 methods of dressing wounds and declared that all 

 the linen should be put into a sterilizing stove." 

 Through the adoption of strict antiseptic proce- 

 dures in assisting child-birth, puerperal fever has 

 now become a rarity, and a case of it would be 

 regarded as a disgrace in any well-regulated hos- 

 pital. 



There were many controversies in the Academy 

 of Medicine. Several physicians and surgeons 

 were adopting Pasteur's ideas, but a considerable 

 number of conservatives regarded them with dis- 



