Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/795

Progress of Modern Science and Invention 595 began to be used for the same purpose. 1 Before the discovery of anaesthetics few could be induced to undergo the terrible experi- ences of an operation ; even the most unsympathetic surgeon could not bring himself to take the necessary time and care as the patient lay under his knife. Now operations can be prolonged, if necessary, for an hour or more with no additional pain. 1082. Germ Theory of Disease and Antiseptics. But even after the dis- covery of anaesthetics surgi- cal operations were usually fatal, for the wound was apt to become infected. Joseph Lister, an English surgeon, hit upon the idea of keeping his instruments scrupulously clean and pro- tecting the wound in vari- ous ways, and thus managed to reduce the number of cases that went wrong. Pasteur, a French chemist, claimed (in 1863) that a virulent kind of ulcer was due to minute organisms, which he called bacteria. He found that bacteria were very common in the air, and that it was they that produced infection. Koch of Berlin discovered the germ of tuberculosis, and other investigators have found the germs of pneumonia, diphtheria, lockjaw, etc. 1 That certain drugs would reduce or destroy pain was known to the Greeks, the ancient Chinese, and even in the Middle Ages. As early as 1800 Sir Humphry Davy, a famous English chemist, advocated the use of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) in surgical operations. Faraday, another English chemist, showed, in 1818, that the vapor of ether could be used to produce anaesthesia. American surgeons began to apply these discov- eries in the forties, and Dr. Long of Georgia and Dr. Morton and Dr. Warren of Boston did much to bring ether into use. In 1847 Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh began to advo- cate the use of chloroform. Like most discoveries, that of producing anaesthesia cannot be attributed to the insight of any single person. JOSEPH LISTER