PASTEUR AND LISTER 35 



highly irritant and poisonous substances. I have 

 seen a man with compound fracture of the leg die 

 within two days of the accident, as plainly poisoned 

 by the products of putrefaction as if he had taken 

 a fatal dose of some potent toxic drug. . . . 



" These and many other considerations had long 

 impressed me with the greatness of the evil of 

 putrefaction in surgery. I had done my best to 

 mitigate it by scrupulous ordinary cleanliness and 

 the use of various deodorant lotions.* But to pre- 

 vent it altogether appeared hopeless while we 

 believed with Liebig that its primary cause was 

 the atmospheric oxygen which, in accordance with 

 the researches of Graham, could not fail to be 

 perpetually diffused through the porous dressings 

 which were used to absorb the blood discharged 

 from the wound. But when Pasteur had shown 

 that putrefaction was a fermentation caused by the 

 growth of microbes, and that these could not arise 

 de novo in the decomposable substance, the problem 

 assumed a more hopeful aspect. If the wound 

 could be treated with some substance which, with- 

 out doing too serious mischief to the human tissues, 

 would kill the microbes already contained in it and 

 prevent the future access of others in the living 



* " I freely used antiseptic washes, and I had on the tables 

 of my wards piles of clean towels to be used for drying my 

 hands and those of my assistants after washing them, as I 

 insisted should invariably be done in passing from one 

 dressing to another. But all my efforts proved abortive, as 

 I could hardly wonder when I believed, with chemists gene- 

 rally, that putrefaction was caused by the oxygen of the air. 

 It will thus be seen that I was prepared to welcome Pasteur's 

 demonstration that putrefaction, like other true fermenta- 

 tions, is caused by microbes growing in the putrescible sub- 

 stance." Huxley Lecture, 1900. 



