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November 23 - November 26, 2021
one, which … rotates the plane of light under the polarimeter; the other, which is inactive [and] has no optical activity.” Moreover, the former contained the same asymmetrical characteristics that Pasteur had shown could only arise from living agents.
he discovered that the shape of the yeast was different depending on the sample. If the wine was unspoiled, the yeast was round. If it was corrupted, the yeast was elongated and appeared alongside other, smaller, rod-shaped structures: bacteria. A biochemical analysis of the spoiled batches also revealed that under the wrong conditions, hydrogen attached itself to the nitrates in the beetroot, producing lactic acid, which gave off the fetid odor and made the wine taste sour.
To say that the yeast acted on the beetroot juice because it was a living organism was to go against the very tenets of mainstream chemistry in the mid-nineteenth century.
“Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment.” It wasn’t long before the word “germ” was being used to describe these protean microbes.
“[By] applying the knowledge for which we are indebted to Pasteur of the presence in the atmosphere of organic germs … it is easy to understand that some germs find their most appropriate nutriment in the secretions from wounds, or in pus, and that they so modify it as to convert it into a poison when absorbed.”
“When I read Pasteur’s article, I said to myself: just as we can destroy lice on the nit-filled head of a child by applying a poison that causes no lesion to the scalp, so I believe that we can apply to a patient’s
wounds toxic products that will destroy the bacteria without harming the soft parts of this tissue.”
carbolic acid to counteract the smell of rotting garbage and to render odorless nearby pastures that were irrigated with liquid waste. They had done this at the recommendation of Frederick Crace Calvert, an honorary professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution of Manchester, who was first introduced to the compound’s miraculous properties while studying in Paris.
“On a New Method of Treating Compound Fracture, Abscess, etc., with Observations on the Conditions of Suppuration”
Not a single instance of pyemia, gangrene, or erysipelas had occurred on Lister’s wards since he had introduced his system.
The sad truth was that most women of this era waited too long to seek help after finding a breast lump.
In 1854, Alfred Armand Velpeau—the lead surgeon at the University of Paris—urged his surgical colleagues to treat breast cancer more aggressively to ensure that all the cancerous tissue was excised. To do this, he suggested that not only the breast but also the underlying chest muscles be removed in what is known as an en bloc mastectomy.
“Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.”
Morton characterized Lister’s published research as fearmongering. “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
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New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. —JOHN LOCKE
“This speculation of organic germs is, I fear, far more than an innocent fallacy,” he told conference attendees, among them James Y. Simpson. “It is a positive injury,” he continued, “for teaching … that those desperate consequences which so often follow wounds result from one cause alone, and are to be prevented by attending to it alone … leads to the ignoring of those many and often complicated causes.”
“A new and great scientific discovery is always apt to leave in its trail many casualties among the reputations of those who have been champions of an older method. It is hard for them to forgive the man whose work has rendered their own of no account.”
The term “catgut” is something of a misnomer. The type of cord is actually prepared from the intestines of sheep or goat, although sometimes it can be made from the innards of cattle, hogs, horses, mules, or donkeys.
One of these men was Thomas Keith, a pioneer in ovariotomy, which was a dangerous procedure that involved the excision of ovarian tumors within the abdominal cavity. For most of the nineteenth century, ovariotomy remained extremely controversial. Those who dared to undertake such an invasive procedure were nicknamed “belly-rippers” on account of the long incision they made across the abdomen of their patients, which frequently became a source of sepsis.
Perhaps the most famous of these was Listerine, invented by Dr. Joseph Joshua Lawrence in 1879. Lawrence had attended Lister’s lecture in Philadelphia, which inspired him to begin manufacturing his own antiseptic concoction in the back of an old cigar factory in St. Louis shortly thereafter. Lawrence’s formula contained thymol (derived from phenol) in addition to eucalyptol and menthol. It also had an alcohol concentration of 27 percent. Nothing would have come of Listerine had the entrepreneurial pharmacist Jordan Wheat Lambert not recognized its potential when he met Lawrence in 1881.
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Robert Wood Johnson first became aware of antisepsis when he attended Lister’s lecture at the International Medical Congress in Philadelphia. Inspired by what he had heard that day, Johnson joined forces with his two brothers James and Edward, and founded a company to manufacture the first sterile surgical dressings and sutures mass-produced according to Lister’s methods. They named it Johnson & Johnson.
The adoption of Lister’s antiseptic system was the most prominent outward sign of the medical community’s acceptance of a germ theory, and it marked the epochal moment when medicine and science merged.
Surgery, he felt, should be safe whether it was performed on one’s dining table or in an operating theater, and antisepsis was the only viable solution when it came to operating in a patient’s own home.
His pioneering work ensured that the results of surgery would no longer be left to chance. Henceforth, the ascendancy of knowledge over ignorance, and diligence over negligence, defined the profession’s future. Surgeons became proactive rather than reactive when it came to postoperative infection. No longer lauded for their quick hand with a knife, they were revered for being careful, methodical, and precise. Lister’s methods transformed surgery from a butchering art to a modern science,
