28o AN ADDRESS ON THE TREATMENT^OF WOUNDS 



in view, provided that we have the two essential conditions comphed with : 

 an unbroken skin to start with and the seat of operation sufficiently distant 

 from any source of putrefaction to admit of adequate overlapping of the sur- 

 rounding integument by the requisite dressing. I leave it to those who have 

 done me the honour to visit my wards to judge whether I am guilty of exaggera- 

 tion in making this strong statement. Such being the case, I should not feel 

 justified, except on perfectly established grounds, in omitting any part of the 

 machinery by which results so important to our fellow creatures have been 

 arrived at. 



Nevertheless I am aware that, concomitantly with the perfecting of the 

 spray, there has been an improvement in other parts of our antiseptic arrange- 

 ments, and I am not prepared to say that our increased uniformity of good 

 results may not be due to the latter rather than to the former. And it may 

 be, for aught I know, that when the International Medical Congress next meets 

 I shall be able to speak of results of a still higher order obtained without using 

 the spray at all. For if further investigation should confirm the conclusion to 

 which our recent facts seem to point, and it should indeed be proved that all 

 idea of atmospheric contamination of our wounds during operations may be 

 thrown to the winds, then no one will say with more joy than myself ' Fort 

 mit dem Spray ' } 



The fact that normal serum is not made to putrefy by the addition of 

 a small quantity of water came out unexpectedly in the course of an experi- 

 ment designed to illustrate a view which I had long entertained as an inference 

 from circumstances observed in surgical practice — viz. that an undisturbed 

 blood-clot has a special power of preventing the development of septic 

 bacteria. This property I ascribed to the white corpuscles, which are well 

 known to retain their life long after blood has been shed from the body.^ 

 I supposed these living elements of the clot to produce this effect in accordance 

 with a principle which I believe I happened to be the first to demonstrate, 

 but which is now generally admitted — viz. that the tissues of a healthy living 

 body have a power of counteracting the energies of bacteria in their vicinity 

 and preventing their development. 



The experiment which I related at Cambridge seemed to confirm this view 

 completely. I have already described one part of that experiment, consisting 

 of the introduction of small quantities of water into vessels containing uncon- 

 taminated blood after coagulation had occurred, and the clot had shrunk so as 



^ This is the title of a recent paper by Professor Bruns, of Tiibingen, advocating the substitution 

 of carboUc irrigation for the spray. 



* Last autumn I observed amoeboid movements in white corpuscles from the buffy coat of a donkey's 

 blood which had been for two days in a glass vessel. 



