The History of the Subject 21 



"It is also to be noticed, if there be any marshy places, that certain 

 minute animals breed [there] which are invisible to the eye, and yet 

 getting into the system through mouth and nostrils, cause serious 

 disorders (diseases w^hich are difficult to treat)." 



Surgical methods of treatment depending for their success upon 

 exclusion of the air, and of course, incidentally if unknowingly, 

 exclusion of bacteria, seem to have been practised quite early. 

 Theodoric, of Bologne, about 1260 taught that the action of the air 

 upon wounds induced a pathologic conditions predisposing to sup- 

 puration. He also treated wounds with hot wine fomentations. 

 The wine was feebly antiseptic, kept the surface free from bacteria, 

 and the treatment was, in consequence, a modification of what in 

 later centuries formed antiseptic surgery. 



Henri de Mondeville in 1306 went even further than Theodoric 

 whom he followed, and taught the necessity of bringing the edges 

 of a wound together, covered it with an exclusive plaster com- 

 pounded of turpentine, resin, and wax, and then applied the hot 

 wine fomentation. 



In 1546 Geronimo Fracastorius published at Venice a work 

 "De contagione et contagiosis morhis ei curatione," in which he divided 

 infectious diseases into — 



1. Those infecting by immediate contact (true contagions). 



2. Those infecting through intermediate agents, such as fomites. 



3. Those infecting at a distance or through the air. He mentions 

 as belonging to this class phthisis, the pestilential fevers, and a 

 certain kind of ophthalmia (conjunctivitis). 



"In his account of the true nature of disease germs, or seminaria 

 contagionum, ... he describes them as particles too small to be 

 apprehended by our senses, but as capable in appropriate media of 

 reproduction, and in this way of infecting surrounding tissues. 



"These pathogenic units Fracastorius supposed to be of the 

 nature of colloidal systems, for if they were not viscous or glutinous 

 by nature they could not be transmitted by fomites. Germs 

 transmitting disease at a distance must be able to live in the air a 

 certain length of timei, and this condition he holds is possible only 

 when the germs are gelatinous or colloidal systems, for only hard, 

 inert, discrete particles could endure longer. 



"Fracastorius conceived that the germs became pathogenic 

 through the action of animal heat, and in order to produce disease 

 it is not necessary that they should undergo dissolution, but only 

 metabolic change."* 



In 167 1 Kircher wrote a book in which he expressed the opinion 

 that puerperal fever, purpura, measles, and various other fevers 

 were the result of a putrefaction caused by worms or animalcules. 

 His opinions were thought by his contemporaries to be founded 

 upon too little evidence, and were not received. 



* "Brit. Med. Jour.," May 7, 1910, p. 1122. 



