180 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



per cent., and only one of these 19 deaths was from sep- 

 sis, or 1/7 of i per cent. ! 



In Nussbaum's insanitary hospital in Munich, which 

 Lister visited in the summer or autumn of i75, he 

 states 1G that pyemia had been 



very frequent and hospital gangrene which made its 

 appearance in 1872, had become annually a more and 

 more frightful scourge until in 1874 it had reached 

 the astounding proportion of 80 per cent, of all 

 wounds that occurred in the hospital, whether acci- 

 dental or inflicted by the surgeon ! 



After trying every possible different method of treat- 

 ment and still being unable to combat hospital gangrene 

 and pyemia, Nussbaum finally adopted Lister's full anti- 

 septic treatment and from the beginning of 1875 they had 

 ''not had one single case of hospital gangrene . . . and 

 were doubtful whether they had had one case of pyemia" ; 

 and 



the convalescent wards which previously had been 

 filled and overflowing constantly Lister saw stand- 

 ing one after another empty, because patients, no 

 longer affected with hospital gangrene, recovered 

 much more rapidly. 



In Halle Volkmann 17 was operating in an extremely 

 unhealthy hospital in small, overcrowded wards, with 

 the toilet rooms opening directly into them and a large 

 drain running directly underneath. It was so bad that 

 it had been condemned to demolition. In the two years 

 after his introduction of the antiseptic method in 1872, 

 no single patient suffering from compound fracture had 

 died either from the fracture or from a necessary ampu- 



16 Brit. Med. Jour., 1875, II., p. 769, and Lister's Works, Vol. 

 II., p. 248. 



17 Lister's Works, II., pp. 249-251, Brit. Med. Jour., 1875, II., 

 p. 769, and Lindpainter (Volkmann's assistant), Deutsch Zeit. f. 

 Chir., Oct., 1876, p. 187. 



