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standard, would remain in them free from fungus life, and I 
believe that such a room or series of rooms might be of great 
advantage in surgery, perhaps as a means of preventing 
spores from entering the wounds of patients, and so doing 
away with or lessening the onus put upon the antiseptic 
treatment, or in giving a better chance of success in serious 
surgical operations. It is, I understand, believed by many 
medical men that pus and blood poisoning may be generated 
in a wound, from the blood corpuscles or bioplasts in the 
body, and that such developments have nothing to do with 
the germs of the outside air, and that the antiseptic treat- 
ment is employed to assist their development, but no one, 
so far as I know, has ever proved this beyond doubt, and 
such an arrangement of a room or rooms as I shall suggest 
further on would, I believe, be one mode of experimenting, 
whereby the whole or a great part of a serious obstacle to 
such researches may be eliminated — but in passing, I should 
like to mention one slight incident in reference to the de- 
velopment of pus in wounds which would tend to show 
that certain germs floating in the air are capable either di- 
rectly or indirectly of developing pus. Some years ago, 
when working with a solution of albumen, which had been 
exposed to the air for some time, and which was then putrid, 
and swarming with bacterise, I accidentally cut my finger, 
and some of the putrid liquid entered the wound. I washed 
it out as well as possible, and thought nothing more of it. 
Next morning it was slightly s woollen, and had gathered, 
I opened it with a knife, and microscopically examined the 
matter, expecting to find bacteriue, but to my surprise no 
bacterise could be observed, and all that could be seen was 
simply pus cells. 
The arrangements which I should suggest on the large 
scale are, a long room or series of rooms in a line, at one 
end of which should be fitted a fan behind a good filter of 
cotton wool, a long pipe with a series of bunsen burners set 
