EASTERN COUNTIES VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 383 
was suggested to him by the results of a large number of ex¬ 
periments which he had carried on during the last seven or 
eight years, but more especially, the results obtained from a 
series of experiments which he commenced about the beginning 
of this year on the cultivation of different fungi, the spores of 
most of which are found in large numbers floating about in our 
atmosphere. The results of these experiments he thought con¬ 
clusively showed that ordinary large rooms may be constructed 
and ventilated with filtered air by means of fans, so that flour 
paste taken as a test standard, would remain in them free from 
fungus life ; and he believed that such a room, or series of 
rooms, might be of great advantage in surgery, perhaps as a 
means of preventing spores and germs from entering wounds of 
patients and so doing away with or lessening the onus put upon 
the antiseptic treatment, or of giving a better chance of success 
in serious surgical operations. The arrangements he suggested 
on a large scale were a large 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 
along it so that when all were lit, a line or sheet of flame would 
be produced which might be gently passed along and made to 
play upon every part of the floor, walls, and roof of the room, 
beginning near the end at which the fan works, and going gradually 
towards the door, by this means any spores or germs adhering to 
the walls would be destroyed and no air could pass back to 
polute the walls or floor which had been thus purified; a stove 
might be arranged at the door end of the room by which cotton 
garments to cover the ordinary clothes of the surgeons and 
attendants might be heated to a temperature presumably suffi¬ 
cient to destroy or paralyse the vitality of any spores or germs 
which might have been adhering to them, and where the knives 
and other appliances used might be previously heated, and where 
water used in washing the wounds might be previously heated 
under pressure. With such an arrangement at an hospital it 
seemed to him that one interesting mode of investigation into 
some most important subject might be commenced. 
Disinfectants are preparations used for the purpose of cleans¬ 
ing or purifying an impure and infected atmosphere, although 
some veterinary surgeons may hold that it is against principle to 
adopt measures likely to deprive us of some of our patients, 
still I hold it to be our bounden duty to prevent, if possible, the 
recurrence of those diseases that are not amenable to treatment; 
those diseases which defy treatment, this is, I maintain, the 
great end and aim of medicine, and I feel proud to see this prin¬ 
ciple so ably enunciated in the opening address at the Royal 
Veterinary College last October. Professor Axe said, “ If there 
is one subject in which the wisdom of recent reforms in our 
educational system stands out more boldly than another, it is in 
the science of preventative medicine. It is here that laurels 
are to be won, but only by the patient, energetic, determined 
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