DETAILS OF ANTISEPTIC SURGERY 227 



water they would be equably diffused through it, and the same effects would 

 be produced in all the glasses by the addition to each of the same quantity, 

 however small. It is thus conclusively shown, so far at least as regards the 

 fluids which I have hitherto made the subjects of experiment, that the material 

 in water which leads to putrefaction or other fermentative changes in an organic 

 liquid is not in a state of solution, but in the form of suspended particles, various 

 in kind and, though present in great numbers, by no means equably diffused, 

 but scattered through the water at various distances, like the amoebae or other 

 animalcules which people it. This will, I believe, be found to be a sure and 

 important step in proof of the theory upon which the antiseptic treatment is 

 based. But a practical paper like the present is perhaps hardly the proper 

 place for discussing its bearings in this respect. 



I have now to speak of improvements in our practice connected with the 

 introduction of new antiseptic substances. 



About three years ago my friend, Dr. Stang, of Sorweg, in Norway, being 

 on a visit to Edinburgh, informed me that a new antiseptic had been discovered 

 in Sweden, and was already extensively used in that country for the preservation 

 of articles of food, and also as an application to wounds. The ' aseptin ', as it 

 was termed, was in two forms, a powder and a liquid, the latter receiving the 

 additional title of ' amykos '. The composition of the preparations was kept 

 secret ; but there was little doubt that they owed their virtue to one common 

 ingredient ; and he promised to send me samples of them, in the hope that 

 they might prove useful in carrying out the antiseptic principle in surgery. 

 This promise he at once fulfilled on returning home, at the same time telling me 

 that the active principle of both the articles had been ascertained to be boracic 

 acid, the virtues of w^hich had been discovered by Mr. Gahn, a chemist in Upsala. 



It happened that I was just then suffering from onychia of the little linger, 

 attended with excessive fetor, and at the same time exquisitely sensitive, so 

 that even a very weak watery solution of carbolic acid caused almost intolerable 

 pain, while it entirely failed to subdue the pungent ammoniacal odour. I at 

 once gave a trial to the amykos, using it just in the same manner as the former 

 lotion, dropping some of the liquid upon the tip of the linger and wrapping 

 it in lint soaked with the same fluid and covered with gutta-percha tissue. The 

 drops of the amykos, as they fell upon the sensitive surface, caused not the 

 slightest twinge of uneasiness ; yet when I changed the dressing, after the usual 

 interval, I was surprised to find an almost entire absence of fetor. Here, then, 

 I had at once sufficient evidence that the new antiseptic, when employed in the 

 form of watery solution, was both highly efficient and much less irritating than 

 carbolic acid. 



