34 PASTEUR AND AFTER PASTEUR 



" modern surgery." It took him years of incessant 

 study, to do what he did for the world. His 

 accounts of his work are well known to all students 

 of his life: it will suffice to quote the famous 

 passage in his Presidential Address to the British 

 Association, in Liverpool, in 1896 : 



" Nothing was formerly more striking in surgical 

 experience than the difference in the behaviour of 

 injuries according to whether the skin was implicated 

 or not. Thus, if the bones of the leg were broken 

 and the skin remained intact, the surgeon applied 

 the necessary apparatus without any other anxiety 

 than that of maintaining a good position of the 

 fragments, although the internal injury to bones 

 and soft parts might be very severe. If, on the 

 other hand, a wound of the skin were present 

 communicating with the broken bones, although 

 the damage might be in other respects compara- 

 tively slight, the compound fracture, as it was 

 termed, was one of the most dangerous accidents 

 that could happen. Mr. Syme, who was, I believe, 

 the safest surgeon of his time, once told me that 

 he was inclined to think that it would be, on the 

 whole, better if all compound fractures of the leg 

 were subjected to amputation, without any attempt 

 to save the limb. What was the cause of this 

 astonishing difference ? It was clearly in some 

 way due to the exposure of the injured parts to 

 the external world. One obvious effect of such 

 exposure was indicated by the odour of the dis- 

 charge, which showed that the blood in the wound 

 had undergone putrefactive change by which the 

 bland nutrient liquid had been converted into 



