ASEPTIC SURGERY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 3, 3 July 1926, Page 20

ASEPTIC SURGERY

A LOST ART THAT HAS BEEN

RECOVERED.

In an article in the "Nineteenth Century" On "Aseptic Surgery in the Fourteenth Century," G. D. Hindley, M.C., M.D., writes:—

"When it is suggested that • aseptic iurgery is really one of the old lost arts now recovered, something more than the mere assertion of so. very unlikely a thesis seems to be required. For Listerism has been hailed by the civilised world as one of the greatest discoveries of an ingenious age, and the originality of this discovery can hardly be impugned. Let it therefore be stated, with all the solemnity that so remarkable a fact demands, that in the early fourteenth century they were men who not only knew that wounds could be healed without suppuration, but Who practised continually, and with Marked success, that cleanly letting alone the wounds which is the basis of aseptic surgery to-day. They used as a mild antiseptic application warm wine alone. The story of the evolution of antiseptic methods by Lister in the nineteenth century has been often told. His ingenious and determined interpretation of Pasteur's work on microbes in connection with fermentation and putrefaction has been tho theme of innumerable orations, lectures, essays, and writings during the fifty odd years that have passed since his early publications. But the wonderful story of Henry de Mondeville 's work, developed • from what was really little inoro than a hint by his teacher and predecessor, Theodoric, has yet to be told in its entirety."