Lister Centenary Exhibition at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum : Handbook 1927.

  • Wellcome Historical Medical Museum.
Date:
1927]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Lister Centenary Exhibition at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum : Handbook 1927. Source: Wellcome Collection.

7 results

25/226 (page 21)
should ever have recommended it for the purpose of destroying the microbes of the air. This was a striking example of a rule of conduct which he professed, and which, in a letter to Pasteur on another subject, he expressed as follows : Next to the promulgation of new truth, the best thing that I can see that a man can do, is the recantation of a published error. In the early 'eighties, Koch's researches had drawn attention to the value of solutions of corrosive sublimate as a germicide, and very soon in many places it became extensively substituted for carbolic acid in wound treatment. Lister himself experimented with the new antiseptic, and sought to find some mercurial preparation which might be substituted for the mixture of carbolic acid, resin and paraffin in the gauze. For, if satisfactory otherwise, a mercurial compound would have this great advantage over carbolic acid, that not being volatile, it would remain for an indefinite period in a dressing which need not therefore be changed so frequently. At the suggestion of Mr. Martindale, Lister tried the double cyanide of mercury and zinc. This salt is a white powder, which, though absolutely insoluble in water, proved capable of being dissolved in small amount in blood-serum, and, small as that amount is, it is sufficient to inhibit absolutely the development of septic microbes, while its very slight solubility in serum enables the dressing charged with it to retain its antiseptic virtues in spite of a very copious flow of serum through it. It is, at the same time, perfectly unirritating to the skin or a healing wound. But when gauze was charged with the double cyanide by drawing it through water in which the salt was diffused, the gauze, when dried, had the great inconvenience that the powder dusted out with the greatest facility. This difficulty was at last got over by dissolving a small quantity of one of the aniline dyes in the water. This had the remarkable effect of attaching itself in a uniform manner to large quantities of the salt and at the same time fixing them securely to the fabric. All dusting out was thus prevented, while there was the further advantage that the colourless salt being dyed, the depth of tint of the gauze indicated the uniformity or otherwise of the distribution of the salt through it. A further advance was made by having the salt itself stained with the aniline dye by the manufacturing chemist,