AN ADDRESS ON THE PRESENT POSITION OF 



ANTISEPTIC SURGERY 



Delivered before the International Medical Congress, Berlin, 1850. 

 [British Medical Journal, 1890, vol ii, p. ^77. ] 



Mr. President and Gentlemen. — At the International Congress in London, 

 in 1881, Robert Koch demonstrated in King's College his then new method of 

 cultivating microbes upon solid media. The illustrious veteran Pasteur was 

 present at the demonstration ; and at its conclusion exclaimed, ' C'est un grand 

 progres, Monsieur.' How vast have been the extensions of our knowledge which 

 have resulted from that great step in advance ! Of these none perhaps have 

 been more striking than Koch's own brilliant discovery of the cholera microbe — 

 picked out with unerring precision by his beautiful method from among the 

 multitude of bacteric forms that people the intestinal contents, and grown and 

 studied with as much definiteness as if it were a cabbage or a rose. 



But while we have during the last nine years learned so much more of the 

 nature and habits of the micro-organisms which invade our bodies, a new and 

 surprising light has been thrown within the same period upon the means by 

 which the living animal defends itself against their assaults. This we owe to the 

 eminent naturalist Metchnikoff, who, having long carefully studied intracellular 

 digestion in the amoeboid cells which form the main mass of the bodies of sponges 

 and other humble organisms, was prepared to observe and rate at its true value 

 an analogous process in the wandering leucocytes of vertebrata. He found that 

 these migratory cells, with whose amoeboid movement we have been long familiar, 

 feed also like amoebae, and while almost omnivorous in their appetites, have 

 a special fondness for bacteria ; taking them into their protoplasmic substance 

 and digesting them, thus preventing their indefinite propagation among the 

 tissues. The cells which exercise this devouring function he termed phagocytes. 



Various objections have been urged against Metchnikoff 's views ; but so 

 far as I am able to judge, he has met these effectively by his masterly series of 

 researches ; and his observations have been confirmed and extended by several 

 independent investigators.^ For the sake of those among my audience who may 

 chance not to be familiar with Metchnikoff's work, I am tempted to relate briefly 



^ See for example Dr. Tchistovitch, Annales de I'lnstitut Pasteur, 25 juillet, 1889, and Dr. Armand 

 Ruffer, British Medical Journal, May 24, 1890. 



