136 ANTISEPTIC TREATMENT IN A SURGICAL HOSPITAL 



with efficient supervision of the patients, and with the teaching of students 

 at the bedside. But from what has been related above, it is plain that no 

 material alteration of the existing system will be required. We have seen that 

 a degree of salubrity equal to that of the best private houses has been attained 

 in peculiarly unhealthy wards of a very large hospital, by simply enforcing 

 strict attention to the antiseptic principle. And, considering the circumstances 

 of those wards, it seems hardly too much to expect that the same beneficent 

 change which has passed over them will take place in all surgical hospitals, 

 when the principle shall be similarly recognised and acted on by the profession 

 generally. The antiseptic system is continually attracting more and more 

 attention in various parts of the world ; and, whether in the form which it has 

 now reached, or in some other and more perfect shape, its universal adoption 

 can be only a question of time. The noble institutions of which our country 

 is justly proud, admirably adapted alike for the treatment of the sick and the 

 instruction of the student, will then be cleared of the only blot that now attaches 

 to them — the malignant influence of impure atmosphere. 



Edinburgh, December 1869. 



