Suppuration and septic diseases : three lectures delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in February 1888 / by W. Watson Cheyne.

  • Cheyne, William Watson, Sir, 1852-1932.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suppuration and septic diseases : three lectures delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in February 1888 / by W. Watson Cheyne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    the more hurtful forms entered, and in these cases their presence was generally indicated by suppuration, &c. Bacilli are never found in wounds covered with carbolic dressings, provided the treatment has been carried out properly. The entrance of these cocci can be avoided by frequent dressings, and by washing the skin over and beyond the whole extent of the dressings when changing them. They gain an entrance by growing in the discharge beneath the dressing, and so spreading into the wound, and also by growing in the super- ficial but dead layers of the epithelium, which protects them from the antiseptic in the gauze. About this time (1879) observations were also being made as to the presence of micrococci in abscesses. Billroth found micrococci in a large portion of the acute abscesses which he examined, and Eecklinghausen, Klebs, and others had often found micrococci in the pus of acute osteomyelitis. I found, by cultivation in cucumber infusion, micrococci in a certain, though small, proportion of cases, and for that reason I was inclined at the time to look on their presence as more or less accidental. The second great landmark was the research by Professor A. Ogston, of Aberdeen, on micro-organisms in abscesses. This research threw a great deal of light on this matter, and Ogston's results are the basis of the more recent work on the organisms of suppuration. He examined the pus from a large number of abscesses microscopically, and found that micro- cocci were invariably present in acute abscesses, and in a few instances in certain situations bacilli were also found. Ogston further described two different kinds of cocci under the terms staphylococci and streptococci, according to the grouping of