240 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



had created a surgical method which was in itself an immense 

 and beneficial progress; and Lister took pleasure in declaring 

 that he owed to Pasteur the principles which had guided him. 



At the time when Pasteur received the letter above quoted, 

 which gave him deep gratification, people in France were so 

 far from all that concerned antisepsis and asepsis, that, when 

 he advised surgeons at the Academic de Medecine to put 

 their instruments through a flame before using them, they did 

 not understand what he meant, and he had to explain — 



''I mean that surgical instruments should merely be put 

 through a flame, not really heated, and for this reason: if a 

 sound were examined with a microscope, it would be seen that 

 its surface presents grooves where dusts are harboured, which 

 cannot be completely removed even by the most careful 

 cleansing. Fire entirely destroys those organic dusts; in my 

 laboratory, where I am surrounded by dust of all kinds, I 

 never make use of an instrument without previously putting 

 it through a flame." 



Pasteur was ever ready to help others, giving them willing 

 advice or information. In November, 1874, when visiting 

 the Hotel Dieu with Messrs. Larrey and Gosselin, he had 

 occasion to notice that a certain cotton-wool dressing had been 

 very badly done by a student in one of Guerin's wards. A 

 wound on the dirty hand of a labouring man had been 

 bandaged with cotton wool without having been washed in 

 any way. When the bandaging was removed in the presence 

 of Guerin, the pus exhaled a repugnant odour, and was found 

 vO swarm with vibriones. Pasteur in a sitting of the Academic 

 des Sciences, entered into details as to the precautions which 

 are necessary to get rid of the germs originally present on 

 the surface of the wound or of the cotton wool; he declared 

 that the layers of cotton wool should be heated to a very high 

 temperature. He also suggested the following experiment: 

 ^'In order to demonstrate the evil influence of ferments and 

 proto-organisms in the suppuration of wounds, I would make 

 two identical wounds on the two symmetrical limbs of an 

 animal under chloroform; on one of those wounds I would 

 apply a cotton-wool dressing with every possible precaution; 

 on the other, on the contrary, I would cultivate, so to speak, 

 micro-organisms abstracted from a strange sore, and offering, 

 more or less, a septic character. 



''Finally, I should like to cut open a wound on an animal 



