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microscopic organisms in any of its parts; on the contrary, that 
with common water, even if it had received but one drop of river 
water, and more so, if of sewer water, contains in each part of its 
whole and in all points of its periphery, anaerobic vibrios more or 
less rapid in their motions and in their propagations. 
The experiment is more remarkable yet when a drop of cul¬ 
ture of vibrio, pure and free from mixture, has been deposited in 
a central portion of a piece of meat. The septic vibrio, amongst 
others, penetrates and multiplies with such a great facility, that 
each microscopic part of the muscles shows it by myriads as well 
as the germ corpuscles of this vibrio. The meat, in those con¬ 
ditions, is all gangrenous, green on its surface, swollen with 
gases, and is easily crushed in giving a sanious repulsive pulp. 
How powerful, though indirect, this demonstration is of the vital 
resistance, or to use an expression more vague and still clearer, of 
the influence of life to overcome the consequences—often so 
disastrous—of surgical wounds ! That water, that sponge, that 
charpie, with which we wash or cover a wound, depose upon it 
the germs which, we see, have an extreme facility of repro¬ 
duction in the tissues and would kill many operated, in a very 
short time, if life would not resist the multiplication of these 
germs. But alas! how often this vital resistance is powerless, 
how often the constitution of the patient, his weakness, his moral 
condition, the bad applications of the dressing, oppose but an 
insufficient barrier to the invasion of the infinitely small with 
which its wound has been, unknowingly, covered! If I was 
a surgeon, impressed as I am by the dangers which would rise 
from the germs of the microbis thus spread upon all the objects, 
particularly in the hospitals, I would not only use instruments 
of perfect cleanliness, but, after having washed my hands most 
carefully and exposed them to a rapid singeing—which is with¬ 
out inconvenience—I would have all the charpie, all the ban¬ 
dages, and the sponges first exposed to a temperature of 130 to 
150 degrees, and would only employ water which had been 
exposed to a heat of 110 to 120 degrees. All this is practical. 
In this manner, I would have to fear only the germs in suspension 
in the air all round the bed of the patient; but observation shows 
