236 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



operator ... a virtuoso, and a dilettante in the art of operat- 

 ing," who said to his pupils: ^'When an amputation seems 

 necessary, think ten times about it, for too often, when we 

 decide upon an operation, we sign the patient's death-war- 

 rant." Another surgeon, who must have been profoundly 

 discouraged in spite of his youthful energy, M. Yerneuil, ex- 

 claimed: ''There were no longer any precise indications, any 

 rational provisions; nothing was successful, neither abstention, 

 conservation, restricted or radical mutilation, early or post* 

 poned extraction of the buUets, dressings rare or frequent, 

 emollient or excitant, dry or moist, with or without drainage; 

 we tried everything in vain!'* During the siege of Paris, in 

 the Grand Hotel, which had been turned into an ambulance, 

 Nelaton, in despair at the sight of the death of almost every 

 patient who had been operated on, declared that he who should 

 conquer purulent infection would deserve a golden statue. 



It was only at the end of the war that it occurred to Alphonse 

 Guerin — (who to his intense irritation was so often confounded 

 with another surgeon, his namesake and opponent, Jules 

 Guerin) — that ''the cause of purulent infection may perhaps 

 be due to the germs or ferments discovered by Pasteur to 

 exist in the air." Alphonse Guerin saw, in malarial fever, 

 emanations of putrefied vegetable matter, and, in purulent 

 infection, animal emanations, septic, and capable of causing 

 death. 



"I thought more firmly than ever," he declared, ^'that 

 the miasms emanating from the pus of the wounded were 

 the real cause of this frightful disease, to which I had the 

 sorrow of seeing the wounded succumb — ^whether their wounds 

 were dressed with charpie and cerate or with alcoholized and 

 carbolic lotions, either renewed several times a day or impreg- 

 nating linen bandages which remained applied to the wounds. 

 In my despair — ever seeking some means of preventing these 

 terrible complications — I bethought me that the miasms, whose 

 existence I admitted, because I could not otherwise explain 

 the production of purulent infection — and which were only 

 known to me by their deleterious influence — might well be 

 living corpuscles, of the kind which Pasteur had seen in 

 atmospheric air, and, from that moment, the history of mias- 

 matic poisoning became clearer to me. If," I said, "miasms 

 are ferments, I might protect the wounded from their fatal 

 influence by filtering the air, as Pasteur did. I then con* 



