. Epitome of the history of medicine : based upon a course of lectures delivered in the University of Buffalo. septic system andbrought about a condition long yearned for by surgeonsthroughout the world, but never previously attained. Whata revolution he wrought by his masterly researches can beappreciated only when one compares the impunity withwhich surgeons now perform operations which, in the pre-antiseptic era were regarded as absolutely unjustifiable,—a conclusion amply warranted by the statistics of that as is the credit due to Lister, it is equally desirableto state that his
. Epitome of the history of medicine : based upon a course of lectures delivered in the University of Buffalo. septic system andbrought about a condition long yearned for by surgeonsthroughout the world, but never previously attained. Whata revolution he wrought by his masterly researches can beappreciated only when one compares the impunity withwhich surgeons now perform operations which, in the pre-antiseptic era were regarded as absolutely unjustifiable,—a conclusion amply warranted by the statistics of that as is the credit due to Lister, it is equally desirableto state that his work was, for the most part, based upon listers studies and methods. 323 the researches of Tyndall, Pasteur, and Koch, which hadestablished the germ nature of the terrible infectious dis-eases and the germicidal effect of filtration, of heat, and ofcertain other substances and methods which permitted ofthe development of his own system. The antiseptic method, as it has since been known, wasnaturally at first crude, although its scientific basis hasnever been shaken ; and that it has been since, in large. Fig. 56.—Lord Lister, , , , (From a photograph.) measure, modified, and that surgeons now resort to little,if any, of the paraphernalia which first made it such aformal proceeding, in no regard shake the scientific natureof its foundation, but rather have tended ever to corroborateit and establish it more and more firmly. Lister began withthe supposition that the air contains the germs which aremost active and pernicious in producing disease. It hasbeen since learned that air-contact is, perhaps, least of all 324: THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE. to be dreaded. We, however, recognize the germs asalways the efficient agents, though we have since learnedthat other sources of contamination are much more to bedreaded than air. It had been the custom, up to Listerstime, to observe usually the ordinary forms of cleanliness,but, not appreciating the multitude of germs
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectmedicine, bookyear189
