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Read to the Section of Surgery and Anatomy of the American Med. Association, May, 1884.
The positive demonstration of the important factorage of bacterial growths in surgical lesions would seem no longer wanting. The recognition of this in the evolution of the systems of modern wound treatment is apparent.
The ill effects of the retention in wounds and cavities of the secretions contaminated with putrefactive bacteria have long been recognized, yet, it has remained for modern investigators to demonstrate that this ill effect is owing to germ development. It would have appeared easy of inference, that this was due in some way to atmospheric, and since the knowledge of the causes of fermentation, to a particulate organic infection, since very severe lesions, attended with abundant exudation, commonly recover without suppuration, when the skin covering the wound is unbroken. When these exudations undergo fermentation from the growth therein of micro-organisms, there