iQis] General 44 1 



director has a wider sphere. The present report shows that plant 

 analysis, a most neglected subject, as well as the so-called synthetics, 

 is to receive attention." Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc, 191 5, Ixv, p. 259. 



A HALF CENTURY OF ANTisEPTic SURGERY. " In a review o£ the 

 scientific features in the development of modern surgery, Lee* has 

 written: *With the discovery of practicable anesthetics, the battle 

 was only half won. The Operation itself had lost much of its horror, 

 but the tragedy of the subsequent days was unchanged. There were 

 the almost inevitable suppuration of the wound, the putrefaction and 

 sloughing off of tissue, the sickening odor, the high fever, the danger 

 of hemorrhage, the slow healing, the complications of blood poison- 

 ing, erysipelas, gangrene and tetanus, the physical and mental an- 

 guish, and the uncertainty of the final outcome. The mortality from 

 major Operations was from 50 to 100 per cent.' 



" Today, on the contrary, the opening of the abdomen, the ehest 

 or the skull no longer is equivalent to signing the death Warrant of 

 the patient. Pasteur proved that fermentation and putrefaction 

 were neither spontaneous, on the one hand, nor due to occult causes, 

 on the other, but are in reality the result of the activity of minute 

 living organisms. Among the fruits of Pasteur's labors was the 

 work of Joseph Lister. 



" It is sometimes stated that antiseptic surgery had its birth in 

 1867, when Lister reported, in the Lancet, his eleven cases of Com- 

 pound fracture, with a 'prelim. note' on the antiseptic method of 

 opening abscesses. He had furnished the first Solution of the prob- 

 lem of how to prevent putrefaction in open wounds. As Paget^ 

 remarks, ' Pasteur could prevent putrefaction in broth, by his aseptic 

 method: but patients cannot be boiled, nor kept in filtered air, in 

 flasks.' To kill the germs in the wound, Lister at first chose phenol 

 (carbolic acid). To prevent any more germs from getting in, he 

 left untouched the scab or crust formed by the antiseptic and blood 

 together on the wound. His first case, in Mar., 1865, failed ; his next 

 case, in Aug., was successful. 



" Half a Century has elapsed since those memorable experiences. 



* Lee : Scientific features of modern medicine, Columbia Univ. Press, N. Y., 

 1911. 



6 Paget : Pasteur and after Pasteur, 1914, p. z^- 



