The disinfectant question : review of a book by Dr. R. Angus Smith, entitled Disinfectants and disinfection.

Date:
1869
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disinfectant question : review of a book by Dr. R. Angus Smith, entitled Disinfectants and disinfection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    u as a witness in favour of what is called the germ theory of zymotic diseases. So long as those diseases were all but universally considered to be due to subtle changes in the constitution of the blood more or less analogous to catalysis or chemical fermentation, and to reproduce themselves by means of morbid blood- products possessing the power to communicate their own peculiar state to sound blood, it was difficult to explain the action on infective matter of carbolic acid, ■which is known to be incapable of arresting catalytic transformations and of neutralizing the products of morbid processes. But so soon as the supposition was started in a plausible form that the zymotic diseases have their origin in living animalcules or their germs, there was room to argue, with some show of reason, that a substance of a nature so inimical to infusorial life as carbolic acid is reputed to be, must of necessity be admirably qualified to destroy, after the manner of a poison, the vitality of organised disease germs. Dr. Smith, in this respect, is not far behind the host of more vulgar adherents of the germ doc¬ trine, which from the time of Kircher and the patho¬ logists of the 17th century has maintained a certain hold on the popular mind. It will be seen by the following extracts from our author that he distinctly puts forward Pasteur as the originator or perhaps rather the reviver of a germ or animacule theory of disease, and speaks of him as having written on the subject of contagion in opposition to Liebig. “ The results obtained by M. Pasteur regarding the exis¬ tence of .organized substances, as we may call them, or germs, is a step so definite, clear, and important, that we mast at once begin as on a new foundation, and date theories of many diseases, and also of disinfection and care from this era (p. 18). ... “ If we examine previous inquiries into the compounds, resulting from the decomposition of organic substances, we shall find nothing which is at all calculated to bring out such an intelligent and rational view of the origin of many diseases, and also of some phases of putrefection [as those of Pasteur]. Chemists, when they have examined products of the latter action, have found sulphuretted hydrogen, hydrogen, carbonic acid, nitrogen, ammonia, acetic acid, lactic acid, butyric acid, and numerous uncertain bodies,