Manual of aseptic surgery / by E.A.R. Newman.

  • Newman, E. A. R. (Ernest Alan Robert)
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Manual of aseptic surgery / by E.A.R. Newman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Attracted by the researches of Pasteur on fermentation, Lister came to the conclusion that septic processes in wounds were caused in the same way, i.e., that they were the direct result of some- thing in the air ( in those days called a “ ferment ”) which, getting access to wounds, set up septic changes. Carbolic acid he found interfered with or prevented the action of this ferment, by checking or retarding decomposition in broth exposed to the air, and applying these results to surgical practice, he argued that by the use of carbolic acid in various ways, the ferment could be destroyed in the air round a wound, or even in the wound itself. In practice he invented and adopted (1) the steam spray, which played constantly on the wound and the surrounding air during an operation ; (2) he used strong solutions of carbolic acid or even the pure acid to wash wounds with; and (3) he prepared dressings impregnated with carbolic acid, which he placed thickly on wounds, with the object of exclud- ing the air from them. Lister did not discover carbolic acid, which had been in use for the preservation of pathological speci- mens, but the application of it to surgical purposes was his work entirely. Experience fully justified the adoption of these measures, many wounds healed by first intention, and suppuration when it did occur, was much less profuse and of shorter duration. Severe local in- fective processes, such as hospital gangrene, no
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