MODERN ADVANCES IN SCIENTIFIC SURGERY. I05 
of scientific hygiene and the methodical employment of anti¬ 
septics in the management of wounds; the treatment of which, 
whether accidental or inflicted with the surgeon’s knife, has 
been rendered much more successful since the advent of anti¬ 
sepsis. 
Many of the details of the antiseptic method may be varied 
in the course of time, and by the introduction of new chemical 
agents, but the grand principle which underlies it, and upon 
which the whole superstructure of its details is built, will re¬ 
main intact and unchangeable. 
It is not my intention to enter into an exhaustive discussion 
upon the relative value of one or another of the numerous 
antiseptic agents now in use, as you are doubtless familiar with 
them;, but we may here glance at the fundamental principles 
calling for antiseptic procedure. 
In the first place, we should remember that the decomposi¬ 
tion of fluids in wounds is directly dependent upon impregna¬ 
tion with organic matter floating in the air and thence deposited, 
or in other ways conveyed in them, fermentative or putrefactive 
changes being thus at once set up in the fluids of the wound; 
these local actions are capable of producing general septic 
infection of the fluids of the body. 
The active agents of decomposition are the micro-organisms, 
which will develop at once their disintegrating activity as the 
conditions favorable to their development (moisture and a 
certain temperature) are present. An accidental or surgical 
wound presents conditions eminently favorable for the develop¬ 
ment of the fungi in question—the oosing blood and lymph, 
the bruised and dead cells of the various exposed tissues, sev¬ 
ered from their natural connections, furnish the moist pabulum 
of a proper temperature. The myriads of particles of filth or 
dust filling the air in all inhabited localities contain, according' 
to indubitable evidence, a very large proportion of spores falling 
upon the wound and its secretions; these promptly develop into 
fungi, and at once set up a fermentative process known as 
decomposition. The products of this fermentation, more or 
