Professor Lister had turned this knowledge to useful account in surgery
in causing the air to be filtered by means of a carbolic spray during
surgical operations, by which means germs or organisms in the air were
prevented from reaching the wounds, and from developing organisms, the
presence of which caused putrefaction or suppuration. This antiseptic
treatment, which had arisen from the observation of germs in the air,
had had a material influence on the art of surgery throughout the world.
The speaker then reviewed the declarations of physiologists regarding
the theories that some diseases arise from minute organisms in the
blood--Pasteur holding that the disease in silkworms was from this
cause; Dr. Davaine, that splenic fever in cattle arose thus; Dr. Klein
alleging that pig typhoid was due to an organism; Toussaint attributing
fowl cholera to a similar cause; Professor Koch attributing tubercular
disease to specific germs; Dr. Vandyke Carter contending that there was
a connection between the presence of bacillus spirillum and relapsing
fever; and Mr. Talamon claiming to have discovered that diphtheria was
due to an organism by means of which the virus could be conveyed from
human beings to animals, and _vice versa_.
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