[Read to the Section on Surgery and Anatomy.]
The deleterious effect of micro-organisms upon wounds can no longer be doubted. The so-called germ theory has passed into the realm of demonstrated The patient labors of scores of very careful infact. vestigators during the last generation have slowly elaborated the fact that fermentation is dependent upon a particulate something, omnipresent in ordinary surroundings, and clearly shown that this something belongs to one or another of the varieties of exceedingly minute vegetable organisms, which compensate by number and rapidity of development that which they lack in size. In the study of these minute organisms the important question arises, perhaps second at present to none in the entire realm of the science of medicine, how can we be protected from their deleterious effects?
As the outcome of experimental research, there has been offered to the profession a large number of socalled germicides, and