XV 111 



Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



fractures were also treated by operation if the bones could not be got into 

 position. Deformities of bone, such as those which occur in rickets, were 

 corrected by open operation, and old-standing dislocations were reduced by 

 operation, the joint being freely opened and prepared for the reception of 

 dislocated end. Healthy joints were opened for the removal of loose bodies. 

 Joints were drained for obstinate hydrarthrosis. Tuberculous joints were 

 laid freely open and drained. Extensive operations were performed for 

 mammary cancer, the axilla being freely opened up. Attempts to cure hernia 

 by operation were made. He reintroduced suprapubic lithotomy in preference 

 to lateral lithotomy ; and, indeed, in many other diseases too numerous to 

 mention, he introduced operative treatment long before others had taken up 

 aseptic work and had rid themselves of the former teaching that such 

 operations were too dangerous. Had he published the work which went on 

 in his wards he would be known, not only as the greatest scientific surgeon 

 and the greatest benefactor of humanity who has ever lived, but also as the 

 greatest practical surgeon of his day. 



Although he was often urged to publish his practical work he always refused 

 to do so, the reason being that he knew that there were very few surgeons 

 who had at that time taken up aseptic work, or who were capable of keeping 

 a wound aseptic ; indeed, there were very few surgeons who did not look on 

 his theories and practice as a species of insanity. He felt that if he recom- 

 mended in the medical press procedures, the safety of which entirely depended 

 on the rigid asepsis of the wounds, he might tempt other surgeons, who were 

 not skilled in aseptic work and who did not, indeed, believe either in its 

 theory or its practice, to undertake similar operations which, without the 

 protection afforded by his work, would have ended in the most terrible 

 disasters. 



Another direction in which his activities found vent was in bacteriological 

 work, much of which he also did not publish. He constantly made 

 bacteriological observations and experiments in connection with his work on 

 the treatment of wounds, and he very soon saw and taught that there was 

 a good deal more to be considered than the simple putrefaction of the 

 discharges in the wounds. He found, for example, that although there was 

 no putrefaction in the discharge as tested by the sense of smell, there might 

 still be pus, and he promulgated various theories as to the production of pus 

 apart from the growth of micro-organisms. He, however, before long gave 

 up those theories and had to take another view, namely, that the organisms 

 which produced putrefaction were not necessarily the same as those which 

 produced suppuration, and that organisms might produce suppuration 

 without any putrefaction being present in the wound. 



As a result of the disappearance of the various septic diseases in his cases, 

 he naturally adopted the view that they must be due to the growth of micro- 

 organisms, not merely in the wound, but in the tissues of the body. He 

 was the first to point out that the tissues of the human body have a 

 powerful action in destroying bacteria and in preventing their spread, and 



