524 LANCASHIRE VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
absorbed, and we have not its toxic effects to rob us of our patients, we 
have its retarding influences. The way in which wounds were sup¬ 
posed to heal will be familiar to you all, and the desire to be able so to 
treat them, that there should be no putrefactive suppuration, has led 
to the search after what is now generally known as the anti-septic 
method. 
The physiological meaning of antiseptic is anything “ that destroys or 
annuls the physiological properties of septic organisms or their germs.” 
Many methods have been tried. The chemist, physiologist, and patho¬ 
logist, by their united labours, have given us a long list of drugs and 
other agents which are antagonistic to the life of Bacteria and septic 
germs, among which we find chlorine 1 in 100,000, permanganate of iron 1 
in 10,000, and salicylic acid 1 in 100, high temperature, and most of the 
essential oils. After the discovery of these there was still another 
difficulty to overcome, how to apply them in surgery in such a manner 
that they should, whilst not interfering with the healing process, still 
prevent, or if present, destroy the agents which produce putrefaction. 
Associated with this subject must now and always stand the name of 
Professor Lister. He has very kindly sent me a pamphlet containing the 
latest and most improved modus operandi of his method of applying his 
antisepticism to surgery. I shall, as briefly as possible, detail it to you, 
and after glancing at some of the marvellous results achieved by the use 
of it in human surgery, call your attention to the cases in our practice in 
which antisepticity, as now practised, or in some other form, may prove 
advantageous. What it is doing for Ovariotomy. It was my privilege 
last month to see the operation of Ovariotomy performed by one of our 
local surgeons. The cyst weighed 56 pounds, and contained several gallons 
of fluid. It was a most hopeless case ; and although the poor woman died in 
rather less than a fortnight after the operation, there is good reason to 
believe that if the operation had not been delayed so long it would have 
had a happier termination. This operation was suggested by Morgagni 
in 1761, performed in America by Mr. Dowel in 1809, and successfully 
by an Italian surgeon in 1815, the woman bearing several children after 
it, five single and twins. The after-treatment consisted of rigid diet, 
bleeding next day, tartar emetic, and lemonade, showing some cases will 
recover any way, vis medicatrix. In 1850, Laurance writing about it, said 
the mortality was so great that he doubted if it would not endanger the 
character of the profession if it was continued. In less than twenty-five 
years after this Lord Selburne calculated that Spencer Wells, by his 500 
successful cases 10,000 years would be added to the lives of European 
women. 
In reviewing twenty years’ work at the Samaritan Hospital, S. Wells 
says that in 1855 he went out to the Crimea, returning in 1856. In 
1858 he attempted his second case on a poor woman from the workhouse 
hospital, which was successful, and the last he heard of her was that, 
thanks to his operation, instead of her dying a pauper in the workhouse, 
she was well, and married to a man with a salary of £240 per annum. 
The last two years he operated on sixty-eight cases, with sixty-one 
recoveries and only seven deaths, whilst in earlier years one in three 
died. He then goes on to speak of the antiseptic method, in which he 
hopes for great things for the future. Dr. Marion Sims, an American 
surgeon of note, who has been here on a professional tour, reports that 
eleven cases in which he saw the operation performed in a fortnight a la 
Lister all did well, and expressed himself enthusiastically as to the merits 
of a method which robs the most serious of surgical procedures of all 
extraneous perils to life. 
