148 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



CHAP. XIV. 



Even more important was the introduction of the 

 antiseptic treatment in 1865, which, by preventing the 

 suppuration of incised or wounded surfaces, has reduced 

 the death-rate for serious amputations from forty-five 

 per cent, to twelve per cent., and has besides rendered 

 possible numbers of operations which would have been 

 certainly fatal under the old system. I remember my 

 astonishment when, soon after the introduction of the 

 practice, I was told by an eminent physiologist of the 

 new method of performing operations, in which the 

 freshly cut surfaces could be left exposed to the air with- 

 out dressings of any kind, and would soon heal. The 

 antiseptic treatment was the logical outcome of the 

 proof that suppuration of wounds and all processes of 

 fermentation and putrefaction were not due to normal 

 changes either in living or dead tissues, but were pro- 

 duced by the growth and the rapid multiplication of 

 minute organisms, especially of those low fungoid groups 

 termed Bacteria. If, therefore, we can adopt measures 

 to keep away or destroy these organisms and their germs, 

 or in any way prevent their increase, injured living tis- 



administration is adopted. And its conclusions have been confirmed 

 by the independent researches of four medical men two English 

 and two American physicians. Yet the old method of adminis- 

 tration is still common in this country, no less than seventy-five 

 deaths having occurred from this cause in 1896, while the Registrar 

 General records seventy-eight deaths from anaesthetics (almost all 

 from chloroform) in 1895. There is thus a terrible amount of mor- 

 tality due, apparently, to the ignorance of medical men on a subject 

 as to which they are supposed to have exclusive knowledge. An 

 excellent account of the work of the above-named Commission is 

 given in the Nineteenth Century of March, 1898, by a lady who 

 has had to take chloroform more than once, by both methods ; and 

 can therefore judge of their comparative effects by the best of tests 

 personal experience. 





