June 18, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



883 



had actually been observed in the circu- 

 lating blood — for the past ten years or more 

 a work of supererogation. 



From Glasgow Lister went to Edinburgh 

 (1869) as the successor of his father-in-law, 

 Syme, and continued to experiment, to prac- 

 tise and to publish, but only a few were 

 convinced, among them being Syme him- 

 self. 



On the continent in the early 70 's Sax- 

 torph in Copenhagen, Thiersch in Leipzig, 

 Volkmann in Halle, Nussbaum in Munich, 

 and Championniere in Paris were among 

 Lister's earliest and €nthusiastic disciples; 

 In America not much attention was paid 

 to his work until he visited Philadelphia in 

 September, 1876, to attend the Interna- 

 tional Medical Congress held in connection 

 with the Centennial Exhibition. He was 

 made president of the Section on Surgery 

 and read a paper on the antiseptic method. 



At that time I heard him and became 

 fully convinced of the truth of the "germ 

 theory" and of the value of his antiseptic 

 method. "When I went on duty at St. 

 Mary's Hospital, October 1, 1876, 1 adopted 

 the system (and was the first surgeon in 

 Philadelphia to do so) and have never 

 abandoned it. For me it changed surgery 

 from Purgatory to Paradise. 



But the reception given to his paper at 

 our congress was anything but enthusiastic. 

 The only surgeon who practically accepted 

 Lister's method was that excellent St. 

 Louis surgeon, John T. Hodgen. But so 

 hazy were the general ideas of bacteria that 

 in his own paper Hodgen speaks only of 

 "germs" and "germinal matter" and had 

 no idea of bacteriology as we now know it, 

 for the science, and even its name, did not 

 yet exist. 



In the discussion of Hodgen 's paper 

 Hewson advocated his then well-known 

 views on the value of dry earth as an " anti- 

 septic." Canniff of Toronto rejected in 



toto the germ theory of putrefaction. 

 Frank Hamilton, of New York, while claim- 

 ing extraordinarily good results from the 

 open-air treatment and the warm-water 

 treatment and other rival methods, ' ' damned 

 with faint praise" the antiseptic method. 

 Kinloch, of Charleston, took the same atti- 

 tude ; Carpenter, of Pottsville, a Civil War 

 surgeon, advocated chlorine in septic cases. 

 Others sang pteans in praise of "perfect 

 cleanliness" and said they "used both car- 

 bolic and salicylic acids, but not for the pur- 

 pose of excluding germs." In the discus- 

 sion on Lister's paper. Van Buren, of New 

 York, doubted the safety of the spray in 

 hernia and abdominal sections and Satter- 

 thwaite, of New York, rejected the germ 

 theory of putrefaction. 



In 1877 Girard, of the U. S. Army,* 

 became the enthusiastic supporter of 

 Listerism. 



In 1880 Markoe, of New York, while ad- 

 mitting the fine results of Listerism, spoke 

 of "its somewhat arrogant pretension to 

 be the true and only gospel of the surgery 

 of wounds."^ 



In 1882 Listerism was again discussed in 

 the American Surgical Association. Briggs, 

 of Nashville, endorsed Lister's method as 

 "an epoch in surgery." Yet so limited 

 was our knowledge of "germs" even then 

 that warfare was waged only upon those 

 "in the air." "When these could be ex- 

 cluded he said "putrefaction . . . fails to 

 occur." Yet Briggs qualifies his endorse- 

 ment by saying that the 



supremacy [of tlie antiseptic method as contrasted 

 with other methods of treatment] . . . can not 

 be demonstrated by statistics . . . and the pres- 

 ent unsettled opinion concerning the proper status 

 of his [Lister's] method is due in great measure 

 to that fact. 



* Circular No. 3, Surgeon General's Office, Au- 

 gust 20, 1877. 



5 Amer. Jour. Med. Scl, LXXIX., 1880, p. 305. 



