8 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY  . {Jan 
ter—a property which explained the peculiar results of 
many previous experimenters, who failed to prevent the 
development of life in boiled liquids enclosed in hermeti- 
cally-sealed flasks. Chevreul and Pasteur (about 1836) 
proved that animal solids did not putrefy or decompose 
if kept free from the access of germs, and thus suggest- 
ed to surgeons that the putrefaction which occurred in 
wounds was due rather to the entrance of something from 
without, than to some change within. 
The deadly nature of the discharges from these wounds 
had been shown in a rough manner by Gaspard as early 
as 1822, by injecting some of the material into the veins 
of animals. 
THE StupyY OF THE INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 
Probably the first.writing in which the direct relation - 
ship between micro-organisms and disease is indicated is 
that by Varro, which says: “It is also to be noticed, if 
there be any marshy places, that certain minute animals 
breed there which areinvisible tothe eye, and yet, getting 
into the system through mouth and nostrils, come serious 
disorders (diseases which are difficult to treat)’’—a doc- 
trine which, as Prof. Lamberton, to whom I am indebt- 
ed for the extract, points out, is handed down to us from 
‘‘the days of Cicero and Cesar,” yet corresponds closely 
to the ideas.of malaria which we entertain at present. 
Surgical methods of treatment depending for their suc- 
cess upon exclusion of the air, and of course, incidentally 
if unknowingly, exclusion of bacteria, seem to have been 
practiced quite early. Theodoric of Bologne about 1260 
taught that the action of the air upon wounds induced 
a pathologic condition predisposing to suppuration. He 
also treated wounds with hot wine fomentations. The 
wine was feebly antiseptic, kept the surface free from bac- 
teria, and the treatment was, in consequence, a modifica- 
tion of what in later centuries formed antiseptic surgery. 
