Here Fleming showed, using test tubes deformed to resemble jagged wounds, that antiseptics like carbolic acid were counterproductive, because they killed the body’s own white blood cells without reaching the gangrene-causing bacteria deep in the crevices of the wounds. Instead, Fleming and Wright argued, wounds should be cleaned with saline solution. It was an important discovery, and one that doctors treating the wounded almost completely ignored, because it felt all wrong not to dress wounds with antiseptics.
