THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION 177 



an indefinite period, while healing advanced in the satisfactory manner that 

 might be anticipated from the absence of all irritating quality in the dressings. 

 There was, however, one circumstance, highly instructive in itself, which inter- 

 fered sadly with the utilit}' of this application ; namely, that if the discharge 

 happened to be sufficiently copious to soak through the cotton-wool and appear 

 at its external surface, putrefaction occurred throughout the entire mass of the 

 moistened part down to the wound, even within the first twentv-four hours 

 after the dressing, if the fluid were sufficiently copious to penetrate within that 

 period. It is only when dry that cotton-wool can arrest the progress of micro- 

 scopic organisms, which have ample room to develop among its meshes when 

 filled with a putrescible liquid. 



And now, Gentlemen, allow me, at the risk of seeming tedious, to endeavour 

 to bring home to you a little more closely the inference that is to be drawn 

 from these facts. But, first, let me describe in detail the manner in which 

 the dressing with carbolated cotton-wool was practised. The cotton-wool 

 having been impregnated with about a two-hundredth part of its weight of 

 the acid in the form of vapour, the surface of a granulating sore or abrasion 

 was washed, together with a portion of the surrounding skin, with a solution 

 of the acid in about forty parts of water. A piece of oiled silk of the size of 

 the sore was then applied, to prevent the dressings from sticking through dryness. 

 Over this was placed a piece of folded linen rag, rather larger than the oiled silk, 

 and impregnated with the carbolic-acid vapour in the same manner as the 

 cotton-wool ; the object of the rag being to absorb the discharge and prevent 

 it from trickling down, as it was otherwise apt to do, below the slighth' absorbent 

 cotton, involving its early appearance at the surface and consequent spread 

 of putrefaction to the wound. Lastly, a well-overlapping mass of the carbolized 

 cotton- wool was securely fixed by a bandage. The result, as before stated, 

 was that, though all chemical antiseptic virtue left the dressing within a day 

 or two, putrefaction was excluded b}^ the cotton-wool for any length of time, 

 provided the discharge did not penetrate to the exterior of the mass. Consider, 

 now, the circumstances of the serum or pus that oozed from beneath the edges 

 of the oiled silk into the folded rag — let us suppose a week after the applica- 

 tion of the dressing, when all traces of the volatile antiseptic had certainly 

 disappeared. Here was a highly putrescible liquid, not subjected to boiling, 

 as in the flask experiment, or acted on by any chemical agent whatever, yet 

 remaining free from putrefaction in a rag moistened with it at the temju^rature 

 of the human body, sim})ly because it was covered over with pure dry cotton- 

 wool. How, then, did this cotton-wool exclude the causes of putrefaction in 

 the atmosphere ? It certainly did not keep out any of the atmospheric gases. 



