184 
H. A. SPENCER. 
fessors, discourse learnedly on the dangers of wound infection 
and the various methods to prevent such disaster ; but wher 
we witness their attempts we find them fully as consistent an 
abortive as the crude attempts that I made in the same line i 
my early efforts to emulate the successes of those scientists, wh 
related their providential achievements in the columns of th 
journals, but forgot the importance of giving their readers 
lucid description of the details that blended inseperably perfec 
the Modus Operandi. 
It is patent that a surgeon who would wear the laurels of 
successful operator in modern surgery should have a keen con 
ception of the relative meaning of the terms sepsis, asepsis an 
antisepsis, and a fixed determination to use the knowledge i 
its strictest sense in his surgical practice, for the omission of 
single detail, however minute, in the performance of aseptic cj 
antiseptic operation will, in the majority of instances, be th 
means of introducing infectious material into the wound. It 
to be also remembered that the sins of commission are frequentl 
as fertile a productive of evil as that of omission; therefore, h 
must not depart from the minutiae of the rules laid down for h 
guidance. 
Aseptic is a word derived from the Greek, and is defined £ 
“not liable to putrefaction”; but surgically it means somethin 
more than this, as our hands, apparel, and instruments are n( 
liable to putrefaction, or at least are only remotely so, while, ur 
less they have been sterilized and are kept sterile, they are n< 
aseptic, but are mediums whereby we may convey the mo 
disastrous infections to the wound. Therefore, by aseptic \* 
mean to bring about a condition in which there is complete at 
sence of infectious or septic material, or in other words excluc 
mg from the seat of operation, and from our hands and those • 
our assistants, from our instruments, sponges, dressings, or an 
material we may select to use in our operations, all micro-o: 
ganisms of a pathogenic nature. 
And, though we may have observed with scruplous care a 
the details for complete asepsis, still it is very likely that fres 
