500 ON THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF SCIENCE 



the atmospheric dust in surgical operations. This conclusion has been justified 

 by subsequent experience : the irritation of the wound by antiseptic irrigation 

 and washing may therefore now be avoided, and Nature left quite undisturbed 

 to carry out her best methods of repair, while the surgeon may conduct his 

 operations as simply as in former days, provided always that deeply impressed 

 with the tremendous importance of his object, and inspiring the same conviction 

 in all his assistants, he vigilantly maintains from first to last, with a care that, 

 once learnt, becomes instinctive, but for the want of which nothing else can 

 compensate, the use of the simple means which will suffice to exclude from the 

 wound the coarser forms of septic impurity. 



Even our earlier and ruder methods of carrying out the antiseptic principle 

 soon produced a wonderful change in my surgical wards in the Glasgow Royal 

 Infirmary, which, from being some of the most unhealthy in the kingdom, 

 became, as I believe I may say without exaggeration, the healthiest in the 

 world ; while other wards, separated from mine only by a passage a few feet 

 broad, where former modes of treatment were for a while continued, retained 

 their former insalubrity. This result, I need hardly remark, was not in any 

 degree due to special skill on my part, but simply to the strenuous endeavour 

 to carry out strictly what seemed to me a principle of supreme importance. 



Equally striking changes were afterwards witnessed in other institutions. 

 Of these I may give one example. In the great AUgemeines Krankenhaus of 

 Munich, hospital gangrene had become more and more rife from year to year, 

 till at length the frightful condition was reached that 80 per cent, of all wounds 

 became affected by it. It is only just to the memory of Professor von Nussbaum, 

 then the head of that establishment, to say that he had done his utmost to 

 check this frightful scourge ; and that the evil was not caused by anything 

 peculiar in his management was shown by the fact that in a private hospital 

 under his care there was no unusual unhealthiness. The larger institution 

 seemed to have become hopelessly infected, and the city authorities were con- 

 templating its demolition and reconstruction. Under these circumstances, 

 Professor von Nussbaum dispatched his chief assistant. Dr. Lindpaintner, to 

 Edinburgh, where I at that time occupied the chair of clinical surgery, to learn 

 the details of the antiseptic system as we then practised it. He remained until 

 he had entirely mastered them, and after his return all the cases were on a certain 

 day dressed on our plan. From that day forward not a single case of hospital 

 gangrene occurred in the Krankenhaus. The fearful disease pyaemia likewise 

 disappeared, and erysipelas soon followed its example. 



But it was by no means only in removing the unhealthiness of hospitals that 

 the antiseptic system showed its benefits. Inflammation being suppressed, 



