The Days of a Man 1875 



human body, he took his chances on gangrene, blood 

 poisoning, and other ills he could neither foresee 

 nor avert. Anatomy was studied in savage fashion 

 in crowded, unventilated rooms by a class of stu- 

 dents who, in general, seemed to care little for 

 personal hygiene. Nursing was largely experimental, 

 though it often reflected the fine spirit shown by 

 many physicians, especially by the beloved "family 

 doctor/' 



Great At about this time, however, certain investigators 



discoveries j ia( j initiated researches destined to base the art 

 of medicine on solid science. In London, Tyndall 

 was making his studies of microbes at rest in dust 

 or floating in the air; Lister of Edinburgh had 

 shown the amazing results to be derived from clean 

 hands, pure air, and antiseptics; at Paris, Pasteur, 

 greatest of them all, was beginning his work on the 

 mildew of silkworms, finding it a problem of biology 

 and not of chemistry, as the blight proved to be a 

 parasitic plant. The net result of all this effort was 

 the discovery of myriads of animal and plant organ- 

 isms, too minute for the naked eye, but readily 

 studied under the microscope and easily reared in 

 artificial cultures. All phenomena of fermentation, 

 putrefaction, and infectious disease were then seen 

 to be due to the presence and growth of such infini- 

 tesimal creatures. Pasteur, for instance, discovered 

 that fermentation was not spontaneous souring, but 

 "life without air," the organisms breathing and di- 

 gesting in sugar solution. Tyndall pictured a battle- 

 field as a gigantic breeding place of the germs of 

 putrefaction which, if visible, would appear as a 

 vulture horde infinitely more destructive than any 

 aggregation of birds of prey. Linnaeus once sug- 



C 148 3 



