ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION 173 



idea of the method of employing them. Hence, while there are now scattered 

 up and down in this country and in various other parts of the world, gentlemen 

 who, having witnessed the treatment in our wards, whether as students or as 

 qualified practitioners, are attaining exactly the same kind of results as we do, 

 success seems a rare exception for any who have not had such opportunities. 



I propose, therefore, in the first place to bring shortly- under your notice 

 some considerations relating to the theoretical basis of the treatment ; secondly, 

 to exhibit before you the chief means that we now employ, and, so far as this 

 can be done upon a table, the mode of using them ; and lastly, by your per- 

 mission, to state some facts which I hope you may regard as sufficient evidence 

 that, by such means employed on such a principle, we ha\'e it in our power 

 to obtain easily and securely results of a kind that without antiseptic manage- 

 ment the surgeon would not be justified in aiming at. 



With regard to the theory of the treatment, I propose to avoid all doubtful 

 disputations, and simply bring before you a few facts, to which I invite your 

 earnest attention and your candid judgement. 



Those of which I have first to speak have reference to the well-known 

 experiment of Pasteur of boiling a putrescible liquid in a flask with an attenuated 

 and contorted neck. It is now nearly four years since I introduced portions 

 of the same specimen of urine into four glass flasks, so as to make each about 

 one-third full, and, after washing their necks, drew them out with a spirit-lamp 

 into tubes less than a line in diameter, and then bent three of them at various 

 acute angles, while the fourth was left short and vertical, though equally narrow. 

 Each flask w^as then boiled for five minutes, the steam issuing freely from the 

 orifice ; after which they were left with the ends of the necks still open, so 

 that air might pass in and out freely in obedience to the condensation and 

 expansion caused by the diurnal changes of temperature. The boiling, I need 

 hardly say, was for the purpose of killing any organisms contained in the liquid 

 or adhering to the sides of the glass : the bending of the necks in three of the 

 flasks was with the view of intercepting particles of dust, which, according to 

 the germ theory, are the cause of putrefaction, as distinguished from the 

 atmospheric gases ; while the fourth neck was left short and vertical for tlie 

 sake of contrast, to afford opportunity for dust to fall into the liquid, where 

 such portions of it as had the nature of living organisms might propagate and 

 induce in the fluid any changes of which they were capable. The result was, 

 that in the vessel with short and upright neck two different kinds of fungi, 

 visible to the naked eye, soon made their appearance, and these grew steadily 

 till they had attained large dimensions, the liquid meanwhile gradualh" changing 

 from its pale straw colour to a deep amber tint, imphing alteration in its chemical 



