400 AN ADDRESS ON THE RELATIONS OF 
success of antiseptic treatment. If we treat our wounds by means expressly 
calculated to exclude altogether the entrance into them from first to last of 
minute organisms, not only are the specific diseases got rid of, not only do 
hospital gangrene and pyaemia, those scourges of former surgery, fly away as 
at the touch of the enchanter’s wand, to trouble us no more for ever, while 
septicaemia also vanishes, and erysipelas, though more stubborn, is robbed of 
its terrors—not only, I say, do these diseases, recognized as specific, disappear, 
but, if the treatment is properly conducted, we get rid of inflammation altogether ; 
and we see wounds that are left with their edges widely gaping, and become 
occupied by a substantial blood-clot, heal, it may be, without a particle of pus, 
a cicatrix forming beneath the superficial layers of the coagulum. Such results, 
proceeding from a mode of treatment designed especially to exclude bacteria, 
may suggest the idea that all inflammation is caused by micro-organisms, and 
that suppuration, whether acute or chronic, is always due to similar agencies. 
Gentlemen, this I believe to be a very exaggerated view of the matter, and 
a view which may tend to have a serious influence upon our practice. For 
example, if we believe that inflammations are due only to an invasion of micro- 
scopic parasites—if that is the sole cause of inflammation in every case, to 
what purpose is it to employ counter-irritation ? Counter-irritation would seem 
an absurdity under such circumstances ; and accordingly I lately read in a work 
by a most able surgeon the statement that counter-irritation may be regarded 
as a thing of the past, as something exploded. Again, in the case of those 
important diseases which we term strumous, the languid degeneration of tissue 
which we see in feeble constitutions, there is at the present time a tendency 
to look upon this as altogether of an infective nature. This also I believe to 
be an exaggerated view, and one which may injuriously affect our practice. 
If, for example, I really believe that the degenerated tissue is infected with 
an invading parasite which is the essence of the disorder, the natural inference 
will be, that if I am to resect a joint affected with strumous disease I ought to 
cut out the whole of the diseased structures ; I should not be satisfied without 
cutting away all the degenerated textures, a practice which I believe would 
often be exceedingly disadvantageous to our patients. 
Let me say a few words in the first place with regard to acute inflammation. 
Acute inflammation is certainly very often caused by the products of decom- 
position, the results of fermentation induced by the development of minute 
organisms. Of that we have abundant proof; but we have also sufficient 
evidence, as it appears to me, that inflammation is often caused otherwise— 
viz. through the nervous system ; that, in fact, the ancient principles of John 
Hunter with regard to sympathy were true principles. Let us take, for example, 
