The principle of disinfection in medicine : being the inaugural address delivered on October 11, 1888, on the opening of the fiftieth session of the Liverpool Medical Institution / by William Carter.

  • Carter, William, 1836-1913.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principle of disinfection in medicine : being the inaugural address delivered on October 11, 1888, on the opening of the fiftieth session of the Liverpool Medical Institution / by William Carter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    go back upon it, and despair takes the place of hope. Thus far the result is good, for it is better to know the truth than to be blundering on in darkness, and possibly hastening the in- evitable issue of a fatal disease, from not having been possessed of the means of recognising its presence. But from only demonstrating structural changes, and yet from their being universally applied to the investigation of all diseases, the use of these instruments has fostered a habit of mind that tends to regard all disease as in its essence structural. Probably the truth lies much nearer the other extreme ; and if we could disabuse ourselves of the belief, largely begotten of purely physical methods, that in some way or other all altered function must be the outcome of altered structure, even though in any particular case we may not be able to prove it; and if we trained ourselves to catch the import of the earlier chemical change, we should often go about our work with more of a spirit of hope- fulness in ourselves, and with more likelihood of helpfulness to our patients. For, unlike our knowledge of changes of structure, which, as I have remarked, is perhaps nearing its attainable limit, that of the chemical changes of the body is but small, and is capable of indefinite and most fruitful increase. In proof of this, if proof be needed, let me read a single passage from one of the greatest living masters in physiology :— Of the meaning of the appear- ance in the tissues of such bodies as xanthin, &c., and of the exact nature of the metabolism which they undergo, we know nothing. We cannot say whether they are simply the accidental bye-products of nitrogenous metabolism—the result of imperfect chemical machinery; or whether, though small in quantity, they serve some special ends in the economy. ^ Thus writes Dr Michael Foster, or at least thus he did write in 1884. The force of the passage lies in the et cetera; for xanthin stands for a large number of substances, a very much larger number than that of whose sources and uses we have some fairly accu- rate conception. And if this is true of physiological chemistry, it is doubly so of that of disease. ' Physiology, 4 th ed., p. 442.