36 PASTEUR AND AFTER PASTEUR 



state, putrefaction might be prevented, however 

 freely the air with its oxygen might enter." 



That was the problem, half a century ago : how 

 to prevent putrefaction in open wounds. Pasteur 

 could prevent putrefaction in broth, by his aseptic 

 method : but patients cannot be boiled, nor kept 

 in filtered air, in flasks. Here is a man, with a dirty 

 lacerated wound, already tenanted by the germs 

 of putrefaction, got into it from outside : what 

 must be done for him ? This must be done : the 

 germs must be killed, and no more must be allowed 

 to get into the wound. To kill the germs in the 

 wound, Lister chose undiluted carbolic acid :* to 



* " The crude carbolic acid which, under the name of 

 German creasote, was supplied to me by my colleague, Dr. 

 Anderson, Professor of Chemistry in the University of 

 Glasgow, was a brown liquid which had been adulterated 

 with water." (Letter from Lord Lister to Sir Hector Cameron 

 in 1906.) Creasote came into public use, about 1840, as a 

 preservative of wood. A few years later, came the use of 

 disinfectant powders containing coal-tar. Lemaire^s first 

 preparation of carbolic acid (August, 1859) was an emulsion 

 of coal-tar in alcoholic tincture of saponine : a few months 

 later, he got some more or less pure carbolic acid specially 

 made for him. Pure carbolic acid, he says, was discovered, in 

 science, by Runge, in 1834, and was so named by him : 

 Laurent called it phenic acid : Gerhardt called it phenol. 

 For a quarter of a century or more, it was nothing more than 

 a rare product of chemistry. " II est certain qu'a la fin de 

 1859 on ne trouvait pas d'acide phenique dans le commerce ; 

 mes premieres experiences out ete faites avec une petite 

 quantite que je devais a Tobligeance de M, Dussard. II etait 

 liquide. Depuis, j'en ai fait demander chez presque tous les 

 fabricants de produits chimiques de Paris. Us n'en avaient 



