Volume 1

A manual of surgery / in treatises by various authors ; edited by Frederick Treves.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of surgery / in treatises by various authors ; edited by Frederick Treves. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Bacteria. the injured part, ana reference has been made to septic intoxication and specific infection. We shall briefly indicate what is involved in these terms. Sepsis, or putrefaction, is the name given to a series of changes which take place in substances containing nitrogen, under the following conditions : 1. Lowered vitality of the substance. 2. Exposure to air and water at a variable tem- perature between freezing and boiling point. In the case of an open wound all these conditions are present. The vitality of the tissues is lowered, and that of a portion of them may be gone altogether. But an exposed wound, if the exposure be of short duration, may not putrefy. What, then, is the cause of putrefaction when it occurs] Some observers attribute the process to the action of particles of dead organic matter supposed to be undergoing certain ' physico-chemical' changes, by virtue of which they start similar changes in unstable organic compounds with which they may come in contact. * By the majority of observers it is held that putrefaction is a process of fermentation, due to the presence of certain microscopic organisms of the class of fungi termed bacteria. This is the germ theory of putrefaction, and is now almost universally adopted. Some, how- ever, maintain, that although bacteria are inseparably associated with putrefaction, they are its accompani- ment, its result, not its cause ; and that, given the putrefaction from whatever cause, the bacteria are spontaneously developed in dead decomposing matter. This involves the whole question of spontaneous generation, into which we cannot enter here. Suffice it to say that it is almost universally agreed that organisms cannot be formed de novo, but arise from parents. * Science and Art of Surgery (Erichsen), vol. u, p. 164- 8th. edition. c—20