COMBATING PARASITIC BACTERIA. 



171 



BACTERIA IN SURGERY. 



In no line of preventive medicine has bacteri- 

 ology been of so much value and so striking in 

 its results as in surgery. Ever since surgery has 

 been practised surgeons have had two difficulties 

 to contend with. The first has been the shock 

 resulting from the operation. This is dependent 

 upon the extent of the operation, and must always 

 be a part of a surgical operation. The second 

 has been secondary effects following the operation. 

 After the operation, even though it was success- 

 ful, there were almost sure to arise secondary 

 complications known as surgical fever, inflamma- 

 tion, blood poisoning, gangrene, etc., which fre- 

 quently resulted fatally. These secondary com- 

 plications were commonly much more serious 

 than the shock of the operation, and it used to be 

 the common occurrence for the patient to recover 

 entirely from the shock, but yield to the fevers 

 which followed. They appeared to be entirely 

 unavoidable, and were indeed regarded as neces- 

 sary parts of the healing of the wound. Too fre- 

 quently it appeared that the greater the care taken 

 with the patient the more likely he was to suffer 

 from some of these troubles. The soldier who 

 was treated on the battlefield and nursed in an 

 improvised field hospital would frequently re- 

 cover, while the soldier who had the fortune to 

 be taken into the regular hospital, where greater 

 care was possible, succumbed to hospital gangrene. 

 All these facts were clearly recognised, but the 

 surgeon, through ignorance of their cause, was 

 helpless in the presence of these inflammatory 

 troubles, and felt it always necessary to take them 

 into consideration. 



