PASTEUR AND LISTER 33 



those of us who are young saw nothing of it. The 

 tragedy is too great for words : it was the burden 

 of all military surgery, all hospital and private 

 practice, all midwifery, in every city on earth, for 

 centuries. Pyaemia, septicaemia, erysipelas, cellu- 

 litis, hospital gangrene it is nothing, to write the 

 names : but it is enough, here, to write them : we 

 have only to note that these infections were scourg- 

 ing the Glasgow Infirmary, to their hearts' content, 

 right up to 1865, as they were scourging other 

 hospitals in all countries ; and were called one 

 writes the most evil-sounding of all the names 

 hospital diseases. 



From 1860 to 1865, as we look back, it is evident 

 if the phrase may be pardoned that something 

 was bound to happen very soon. Trousseau and 

 Chalvet and Lemaire in France, Lund and William 

 Budd and Spencer Wells in England, these and 

 others were possessed of the significance of Pasteur's 

 work. Preparations of creasote, for the cleansing 

 and dressing of wounds, had long been in use. To 

 read Lemaire's monographs, Du Coal-tar SaponinJ, 

 1860, and De L* Acide PhJnique, 1863, and Spencer 

 Wells's address at the Cambridge meeting of the 

 British Medical Association, 1864, is to realise that 

 everything was ready for Lister's work. 



We say that he discovered the antiseptic method : 

 but we must not think of any sudden invention of 



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