FOMENTATION. 551 
a distance of five inches from the wound. The two were 
connected by a channel, or sinus, as it is technically called, 
through which he was able to empty the abscess, without 
the application of the lance. 
By what agency was that channel formed what was it 
that thus tore asunder the sound tissue of my instep, and 
kept me for six weeks a prisoner in bed? * In the very 
room where the water dressing had been removed from my 
wound and the goldbeater's-skin applied to it, I opened 
this year a number of tubes, containing perfectly clear and 
sweet infusions of fish, flesh, and vegetable. These her- 
metically sealed infusions had been exposed for weeks, 
both to the sun of the Alps and to the warmth of a 
kitchen, without showing the slightest turbidity or sign 
of life. But two days after they were opened the greater 
number of them swarmed with the bacteria of putrefaction, 
the germs of which had been contracted from the dust-laden 
air of the room. And had the matter from my abscess 
been examined, my memory of its appearance leads me to 
infer that it would have been found equally swarming with 
these bacteria that it was their germs which got into my 
incautiously opened wound, and that they were the subtile 
workers that burrowed down my shin, dug the abscess in 
my instep, and produced effects which might easily have 
proved fatal. 
This apparent digression brings us face to face with the 
labors of a man who combines the penetration of the true 
theorist with the skill and conscientiousness of the true ex- 
perimenter, and whose practice is one continued demonstra- 
tion of the theory that the putrefaction of wounds is to be 
averted by the destruction of the germs of bacteria. Not 
only from his own reports of his cases, but from the 
reports of eminent men who have visited his hospital, 
and from the opinions expressed to me by continental 
surgeons, do I gather that one of the greatest steps ever 
made in the art of surgery was the introduction of the 
antiseptic system of treatment, introduced by Professor 
Lister. 
The interest of this subject does not slacken as we 
proceed. We began with the cherry-cask and beer-vat; 
we end with the body of man. There are persons born 
with the power of interpreting natural facts, as there 
