FKHMENTA TION. 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 goldbeaterVskin 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 



