“Nature is here regarded as some murderous hag,” he wrote, “whose fiendish machinations must be counteracted. She must be entrapped into good behavior, she is no longer to be trusted.” Even the editor of The Lancet refused to use the word “germs,” instead calling them “septic elements contained in the air.” It was difficult for many surgeons at the height of their careers to face the fact that for the past fifteen or twenty years they might have been inadvertently killing patients by allowing wounds to become infected with tiny, invisible creatures.
Oops?
