40 PASTEUR AND AFTER PASTEUR 



each case, more open-minded in his criticism of h 

 own method. 



We are too apt to think of " Listerism " as a set 

 of rules for the safe performance of operations. 

 That is not how it was discovered. It was, first 

 and foremost, a way of preventing putrefaction in 

 compound fractures. And we are too apt to talk 

 as if " the aseptic method of operating " -the 

 sterilising, by heat, of instruments, dressings, 

 towels, and so forth --had somehow taken the 

 meaning out of Lister's work. That is not how 

 the science and art of surgery, or any other science 

 and art, are improved. Putrefaction, scourging the 

 wards of the infirmary, killing case after case with 

 pyeemia or with hospital gangrene that was what 

 Lister had to fight, and fought, and beat. And if 

 A, B, or C, to-morrow, were to be run over, and be 

 admitted to hospital, with a smashed leg, and 

 germs all ground into the wound, he or she would 

 have the advantage of " Listerian precautions," as 

 they used to be called. Indeed, antiseptic and 

 aseptic are nothing more than two ways of arriv- 

 ing at one result ; two lines of attack against one 

 enemy. As Sir William Osier said to the Royal 

 Commission on Vivisection, on November 20, 1907, 

 "It is the difference between tweedledum and 

 tweedledee. They are both applications of the 

 same principle." For example, neither catgut 



