BEFORE AND AFTER LISTER 179 



his first paper, he reported in detail eleven cases, with one 

 death, an unheard of mortality of only 9 per cent. ! 



Thus encouraged, he attacked with an equally happy 

 outcome abscesses, especially that bane of surgery in those 

 septic days, abscesses of the spine. Be it observed, too, 

 that fifteen long years were to elapse before the tubercle 

 bacillus, the cause of such abscesses, was discovered by 

 Koch (1882). 



From accidental wounds it was but a step to deliberately 

 inflicted wounds, i.e., surgical operations. Here, too, pre- 

 ventive antisepsis gave equally valuable results. 



Lister, however, was more given to establishing prin- 

 ciples and methods than to statistics, but some of his early 

 disciples published striking proofs of the value of his 

 method by contrasting their former results with those 

 which followed the acceptance of the germ theory and the 

 adoption of Lister's antiseptic treatment. 



Thus Dennis 14 (1890) says that 



The time is within my own recollection when, in 

 Bellevue Hospital, amputation was immediately per- 

 formed as a routine treatment to prevent blood poison- 

 ing, upon the admittance of a compound fracture ; and 

 this operation was considered by surgeons as offering 

 to the patient the only chance of recovery. 



This but corroborates what Syme had already said in 

 Edinburgh, that on the whole he was inclined to think 



it would be better if in every case of compound frac- 

 ture of the leg amputation were done without any 

 attempt to save the limb. 15 



Dennis in his paper reported 681 cases of compound 

 fracture, with only 19 deaths, a mortality of only 2.8 



i* Medical News, April 19, 1890, p. 423. 



15 Cameron, Brit. Med. Jour., Dec. 13, 1903, pp. 1844-1845. 



