iv # Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



other surgeons, especially in France, but no real improvement had followed, 

 because the attempts had been solely directed against the smell and not 

 against the bacteria which were the cause of it. 



This was the stage which Lister had reached when his attention was called 

 to researches which Pasteur had recently made on the supposed spontaneous 

 generation of micro-organisms and on the process of fermentation. The 

 presence of minute living bodies in decomposing fluids had been known for 

 many years and their origin had become a subject of violent debate. One 

 view was that these bodies arose de novo in the decomposing materials, in fact 

 that we had here an example of spontaneous generation of life ; others, on the 

 contrary, held that there was no such thing as spontaneous generation and 

 that these minute " animalculse " were merely the descendants of preceding 

 animalcule which had been carried into the putrescible fluids along with the 

 dust from the air. Experiments had been carried on for more than a century 

 with the view of settling this question, and though evidence was steadily 

 accumulating against the theory of spontaneous generation it was not till 

 Pasteur took up the question that the final blow was given to this view and 

 that the doctrine of omne vivuvi ex vivo was finally established. 



That these minute living bodies, or " vibrios," as the larger forms were 

 termed, had anything to do with the putrefactive changes in the organic 

 fluids in which they were constantly present did not for a long time occur to 

 anyone, and the investigations on spontaneous generation were looked on as 

 of purely scientific interest and not of any practical value. For about fifty 

 years before Pasteur took up the matter, the cause of fermentation had also 

 been very extensively investigated by chemists, especially as regards the 

 alcoholic fermentation, and it had ultimately been demonstrated that this 

 fermentation was undoubtedly due to the growth of the yeast cells which 

 were always present in the fermenting fluids. It had also been quite recently 

 suggested that other fermentations in organic fluids, and among them the 

 putrefactive fermentation, were due to the "vibrios" which developed in 

 them ; but here the final proof was furnished by Pasteur's researches. But 

 neither Pasteur, nor anyone who preceded him, with the exception of Davaine, 

 had imagined that these bodies had anything to do with the production of 

 disease. Davaine had, indeed, some years previously, noticed that, in the 

 blood of animals which had died of anthrax, large rod-shaped bodies or 

 " vibrios " were constantly present, and he had suggested that they might 

 have something to do with the disease, but the matter had not been carried 

 further. 



These researches had not attracted the attention of medical men ; and, 

 indeed, it is hardly to be wondered at that a surgeon, who had much to occupy 

 his mind with his surgical and pathological work, did not happen to be 

 familiar with these recondite and apparently useless researches on spontaneous 

 generation ; but when Lister read Pasteur's convincing proof, both of the 

 fallacy of the theory of spontaneous generation and of the relation of 

 living bodies which were derived from pre-existing bodies of the same 



