PASTEUR AND LISTER 229 



and such awful statistics of mortality, embittered 

 the anguish of defeat." Yet this was in Pasteur's 

 own land, the home of researches which ten years 

 earlier had already given the clearest indications 

 as to how such tragedies might be avoided or 

 mitigated. Humanity in the mass is slow to see 

 the significance of new knowledge, and the pro- 

 fessors of the art of surgery were in those days 

 averse from adopting new methods, especially 

 when, as in this case, the suggestions came from 

 a source apparently unconnected with their art. 

 In this country, however, there was one man 

 at least, who, endowed with the practical genius 

 of his race, but possessed also of the instinct and 

 experience of an investigator, had appraised, 

 appreciated, and utilised the teaching of Pasteur. 

 For three years or more before the war Lister had 

 begun to fight sepsis with antiseptics, and months 

 before the wounded from the fields of Worth and 

 Gravelotte lay rotting in the hospitals of France 

 he had shown to all men how thousands of them 

 might have been saved. Yet it occurred to no 

 one in France during the first battles at any rate 

 to make any use of the new methods. If from 

 the tragedies of the present war the horror of 

 sepsis has been largely absent, it is to the work 

 of Pasteur and the experimentalists who have 

 followed in his footsteps that the chief credit must 

 be given. Organisation and increase in profes- 

 sional skill have played their part in the better- 



