J74 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



our knowledge of "germs" even then that warfare was 

 waged only upon those "in the air." When these could be 

 excluded he said "putrefaction . . . fails to occur." Yet 

 Briggs qualifies his endorsement by saying that the 



supremacy [of the antiseptic method as contrasted 

 with other methods of treatment] . . . cannot be 

 demonstrated by statistics . . . and the present un- 

 settled opinion concerning the proper status of his 

 [Lister's] method is due in great measure to that 

 fact. 



He emphatically dissented from the germ theory, and 

 added : 



Carbolic acid is the keystone of the Listerian wound 

 treatment. . . . The germ theory is at fault and 

 furnishes a very unstable foundation for a system of 

 wound treatment. 



Moore, of Rochester, N. Y., proposed to exclude the 

 air 



by passing carbonic acid gas directly into the place 

 where the operation is to be performed. In conse- 

 quence of its being heavier than the atmosphere it 

 preoccupies the space ( !). 



Campbell, of Georgia, "did not believe that bacteria 

 <. . . are the cause of that condition [suppuration]." 

 The various men named were among our foremost Ameri- 

 can surgeons. 



Lister's opponents entirely missed the great fundamen- 

 tal facts underlying the germ theory and Lister's anti- 

 septic method, viz., that infection in all its various forms 

 was always of bacterial origin a wholly novel and mo- 

 mentous idea. Each form of infection, e.g., tetanus, 

 tuberculosis, typhoid, etc., it was soon proved, arose in- 



