The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-09-11
PROGRESS OF SURGERY.
DIR. Pierre DeIbet, of the University of
Paris, Talks on the Subject.
Philadelphia Press.

Philadelphia Press.
At the beginning of the nineteenth CEN
tury surgeon of some consequence, Boyer,
professor of the faculty at Paris, member
of the academy, made baron by the En-
peror, wrote a great work of eleven vol
umes which represented the state of sur
gerry at his time, and which, in it's first
phrase, declares that surgery has attained
the highest degree of perfection of which
it is capable. Now, during the last twenty
years surgery has made infinitely greater
progress than it did during the twenty CEN
turtles which preceded Boyer
This great advance we owe to Lister. and
Lister owes it TO Pasteur. During the last
twenty years three-fourths of those whose
lives have been saved or prolonged by
medicine or surgery owe the fact indirectly
TO Pasteur. So when one assists at some
marvellous operation, when one merely
hears of some apparently marvellous cure
such as frequent to-day, ones
thoughts ought to be borne to this wonder
full man with an infinite recognition, with
sentiment of religious piety akin to that
which the devotee bears to his divinity
1t is difficult to imagine the drama which
was enacted in a surgical operation before
pain was suppressed. In the majority of
cases they commenced by binding the pa
tient as il for torture, or attained the same
end by the use of four five vigorous and
tried attendants.
Thanks to anesthetics, that is all changed
to-day No more consciousness, no more
movements, no more pain. The personality
is suppressed, sensibility is abolished, mo-
bility extingushed. Xegetative life only
remains in the patient With the suppress
sion of pain came a change in the mode
There a
geon about to dismember the shoulder of
wounded soldier. A physician desiring
TO watch the operation in detail was busy
adjusting his spectacles when a projectile
struck him. 1t was the severed limb of
the patient. The surgeon had already ac-
complished his work. To-day the opera tor
can give both more time and closer atten-
ton TO his work.
Without detailing the means which at
present are employed for staying the flow
of blood it will suffice to state that the
most perious operations are performed
with less loss of blood than that of a child
with bleeding nose. Nevertheless, in spite
of anesthetics and in spite of hemostasia
surgery came to a miserable pass. This
was due TO Infection The very attempts
made at antiseptics became fruitful sources
or horrible diseases, the propagation of
malignant microbes. The loss of the men,
bers themselves was less TO be dreaded
than the maladies which came in the train
of a seemingly successful operation, some
of them developing putrid gases in the it's
sues Ii was a problem to put the reason
10 1Out. w ndteNer might be the lntellectual
VlSor OF surgeon, or Whatever might be
his manual dizziness. death was almost in
evitable. In 1868 and 1869 two of the wisest
and most careful surgeons in the world
experienced the sorrow of witnessing all
their patients die. Just as the sower sowS
his grain in the burrows, so the surgeon,
with his dressing materials. his instruments
and his hands-above all his hands-sowed
the swarming microbes of infection. lg-
nOrant OF the cause, ignorant OF the nature
of infection, they were completely dis
armed. They were despairing and power
less
But like Moses. who. with a stroke of his
rod brought forth a fountain from the rock
Pasteur with a stroke of his genius caused
new world to come out of the great UNI
known. the world of the infinitely little, of
the microbes
it. All revolutionary ideas are long i'm pre-
pairing: there is no Christ without His pre-
curSorS; and so before PaSteur there were
great spirits pressing on toward the light
But his was the discovery that there were
microbes swarming i'm the hospital. that
another by the force of the air in which
they foated. and above ALL by the instru-
ments and appliances OF the operating
geOn.
Lister created the first antiseptics. now
no longer in use, but developed since into "A
perfect system, SO that everything that
comes In contact with the operation is COM
pletely SteriliZed and every infection avert
ed. Antseptics have opened new domain.
that OF viSceral surgery. Erected with great
ious rapidity, il has rendered every opera
ton possible, so that the surgery OF to-day
knows no limits save those imposed by
physiology.
Surgery is now playing a beautiful role
and deserves that some poet should rise 10
lar-r,, her rl~g