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which, after amputating the thigh for disease of the knee-joint, I gave 10 grains of the sulphite every two hours from the time of the amputation; and when, on the sixth day, an ominous rigor occurred, I doubled the frequency of the administration. Death, however, took place nevertheless, and this was by no means my only experience of such disappointment.
At the same time, I did my best by local measures to diminish the risk of communicating contagion from one wound to another. I freely used antiseptic washes, and I had on the tables of my wards piles of clean towels to he used for drying my hands and those of my assistants after washing them, as I insisted should invariably be done in passing from one dressing to another. But all my efforts proved abortive, as I could hardly wonder when I believed, with chemists generally, that putrefaction was caused by the oxygen of the air.
It will thus be seen that I was prepared to welcome Pasteur's demonstration that putrefaction, like other true fermentations, is caused by microbes growing in the putrescible substance. Thus was presented a new problem: not to exclude oxygen from wounds, which was impossible, but to protect them from the living causes of decomposition by means which should disturb the tissues as little as is consistent with the attainment of the essential
It has been since shown that putrefaction, though a most serious cause of mischief in wounds, is not
