Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-09-09
AS ONE WOMAN SEES IT
story Of How Lister, the English
Surgeon, Adapted Pasteur's Theory
OF Germs to His use In
the Surgery
BY SARAH ID. LOWRIE

one night, lighted the lamp on my night.
stand and fell to reading q book that I
found there ready at hand,
1t was a biography Of Lord Lister, the
great English surgeon Of the late nineteenth
century, and the discoverer Of modern anti
septic treatment.
He took Pasteur's discovery of germs and
turned 1t to practical use in his surgery.
One forgets that before he proved that sup
puration Of wounds came from nm infection
from the outside, and could be counter
acted and even obviated by sterilizing appli-
cations before and during and after opera
tions, the hospitals had been veritable
pesthouses and about every operation in
three fatal. The feeling that ignorant per,
to go to a hospital meant sure death, was
founded on only too terrible an experience
of the poor who were taken there less than
a century ago.
1t seems strange that until Listers great
discoveries and stcadfast putting them to
practical account doctors did not guard
themselves or their patients by wearing pro-
tective clothes or gloves, by washing their
hands even, or by boiling their instruments,
or preparing. the surface to be cut into In
any antiseptic way.
The after dressing of the wounds was as
careless-from modern point of view--as
the preliminary preparation, and the terrible
hospital gangrene, the deep seated abscesses,
the almost inevitable retardation Of healing
were taken as matter Of course by doctors
and nurses, as was also the sickenng hos
pital smell which arose from those yeritably
putrefying sores.
FTNHE rich suffered less than the poor, be-
i cause they could be nursed at homc in
rooms uncontaminated by the germs of past
occupants, but even for the well to do such
wounds as came from compound fractures
or crushed flesh or the cuttings of cancerous
or tuinor growths were more often fatal
than not The story of 'Rab and His Friends
was hospital experience Of Listers day
and written by fellow surgeon. The after.
effect OF the operation was a matter Of
course in DIR. Browns practice and yet
would be very unusual today, due to Listers
untagging efforts to make Brown and the
other surgeons see that that septic poison
OF the blood was due to u germ, not from
poison springing up from within.
THE strange thing about it was that the
L great surgeons of Edinburgh and of Lon
don and America would not accept the germ
theory as proved fact for twelve years or
more after Lister had demonstrated it in
his surgical wards in Glasgow, then in Edin-
burGh and finally in London. Only the
younger men believed in II and adopted
Listers methods to forestal septic poison
ing in their patients by antiseptic treatment.
remember as young girl hearing DR..
Hayes Agnew, who was a master surgeon
and world famous, inveigh against the
germ theory to my mother over hurt of
mine that he was treating.
And the doctors who used to drive their
own carriages came straight up from hand
ling their reins into the sickroom and undid
the bandages and dressed the wounds with
out any more thought as to the state Of
their hands than they had as to the possible
infection from the boards that most of them
wore and more or less smoothed thought
fully while they questioned the patient.
A LII this was inevitable as long as the
"A theory of the infection of wounds was
based on a belief that the outside mir en-
gendcred fever and that the poison in
wounds was generated from within. latent
in the body, and, therefore, inevitable in Il
greater or lesser degree according to the
patients power of resistance. But what
strikes the lny reader with amazcment was
the willful blindness of the notable surgeons
Of Listers own day to the facts that he
presented to them to at least verify or to
disprovc. It seemed that the very fact
that the older men among his contempo
raries had based their practice on theory
that ignored germs made them unwilling to
confess their mistakes by revolutonizing
their methods.
They dismissed the germ idea without
being at pains TO understand 1t, let alone
try it, and by doing so they delayed the
introduction of modern antiscptc methods in
twelve years. BY virtue of their age and
reputation they held control of the schools
of medicine and the great operation clinics
and the wards.
THERE seems to be almost as great danger
L Of a physicians becoming ingrained in
his prejudices against progress as theo-
logian his very success seems to tempt him
to be static rather than fluid in his thought
processes,
Nv thott al rI,lo
is a new school of young discoverers who
are working on the theory that diseases of
the mind are, many Of them, symptoms of
diseases of the body, and these new thinkers
have to fight step by step the established
authorities in their prejudice for treating
insa nifty only above the neck.
The younger men and the men with young
minds are interested to study at least the
theory Of making the body accountable for
the mind, but the great majority of the
leading men IN the profession nre frankly
Indifferent Their classification of durable
and incurable cases of insanity is satisfnc-
tory to them they have more patients than
they can we'll attend to. their regulations
are made and TO reyolutionize the whole
procedure and reorganize their sanitariums
and clinics and hospitals would be to them
unthinkable.
And yet the general public, and. above all
the younger generation of doctors who are
coming on, will inevitably scrap oil their
metnOQS j tHOse ultlHOub are based nlig-
taken conclusions. A physicians authority
rests on the belief Of the public in his always
keeping well in the van Of scientific dis
cOvery.
A WOMAN that I know quoted great
n New York baby doctor as saving.
apropos Of new theory of feeding babies,
that he wasn't interested enough in il to
listen to it, let alone read it up, or try it
out. Her comment was that that was
enough to damn him in her eyes
The particular theory is. as it lappens.
being carried out in u hospital in Rye, New
York, and that ever young authority on
babies, DIR. Holt, is pledged to try il out
| in his hospital in New York City this year.
| 1t Is Dutch in Its origin and some experts
in preparing the milk have been brought
over from Holland to the Rye hospital TO
test the food for year on the babies that
come under the supervision Of that hospital
| and clinic.
The milk is sour and the formula for its
preparation calls for some -four. The bottles