In a letter that appeared in The Lancet, a correspondent who signed his name “Flaneur” made a perceptive observation regarding the city’s slow adoption of antisepsis: The truth is, that this is a question in science rather than in surgery, and hence, while eagerly adopted by the scientific Germans, and a little grudgingly by the semi-scientific Scotch, the antiseptic doctrine has never been in any degree appreciated or understood by the plodding and practical English surgeon. Happily for his patients, he has for a long time been to a considerable extent practising a partially antiseptic
...more
