""Si'^J^^m 



CHAPTER IV. 



ANTISEPSIS AND ASEPSIS. 



Although infection of wounds has always attracted the attention 

 of the surgeon, he has until recently been ignorant of its nature, of its 

 cause, and of the methods of avoiding it. During the first half of the 

 last century infection of exposed wounds was attributed to impure and 

 exhausted air, especially to the hospital atmosphere and to air charged 

 with the miasma of putrefaction. The works of Pasteur and Tyndall 

 seem to confirm the truth of this idea, by showing that it is not the air 

 itself which has injurious properties, but only the germs it carries in 

 suspension. Sterile organic fluids exposed to the atmosphere immedi- 

 ately begin to ferment, but provided they be kept from contact with all 

 but optically pure air filtered through cotton wool they undergo no 

 change. It was therefore concluded that decomposition and putre- 

 faction are due to little animate bodies, suspended in the atmo- 

 sphere, — /. c. germs or microbes — which under favourable conditions 

 break down organic substances. Save for micro-organisms there 

 would be no decomposition and no putrefaction. Extending the logical 

 process, Lister was of opinion that the same process went on in injured 

 tissues exposed to the action of air as occurred in organic liquids. 

 Septic changes in wounds therefore represent a kind of fermentation. 



The first important researches with the object of preventing such 

 complications are relatively recent. In 1865 Lister, inspired by 

 Pasteur's work on fermentation, began those experiments which 

 eventuated in the formulation of his "antiseptic method;" while in 

 1870 Guerin, following up the same work and that of Tyndall, invented 

 his surgical dressing. 



Guerin applied to wounds the experimental conditions necessary for 

 preserving organic materials from change when in contact with the air. 



