History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

Medical Bacteriology 345others. He stated that in the inaugural thesis which he had presented to themedical faculty of the University of Vermont the previous year he hadrecapitulated the views of the best writers on the germ theory of disease asfollows:"That contagion of infectious diseases is regarded by some authors as toominute to be discovered by the microscope; by others, as bacteria whichcannot be distinguished from those generally found in many pathologicalprocesses in the body. The spread of the contagium requires a regionhabitat) where it has always been endemic, as India for cholera, and Irelandfor typhus fever, unless we accept for it a theory of spontaneous generation.It also requires a certain age, sex, and predisposition on the part ofthe individual, and its extension is promoted by warmth, moisture andfilth;these accessory circumstances explaining how there may be degreesin contagion. Each infectious disease must, beside, have special bacteriaassigned as its cause."Valin also translated Pasteur's report to the Academy of Medicine ofParis on his experiments with fowl cholera. During these years (1879-1881)in the same journal appeared also translations and abstracts of Billroth andEhrlich's article on Coccobacteria septica, of Talamon's report on thebacteriology of diphtheria, of reports of Pasteur's work on vaccinationagainst anthrax and on hydrophobia, and of articles(an(not by Lister) on theantiseptic treatment of wounds. Lister's method and results are described,however, in a letter written from London by Charles T. Parkes, the Chicagosurgeon. The only reports on original bacteriologic work are one publishedby Lester Curtis on micro-organisms in the blood in a case of tetanus andone by Nicholas Senn, then in Milwaukee, on spontaneous osteomyelitisin the long bones, in which he stated that in the pus he had found "numerousliving cocci."In 1881a long monograph on yellow fever by H. D. Schmidt of NewOrleans was read before the Chicago Biological Society and then printed infull in the Chicago Medical Examiner, running through several numbers.Schmidt discussed at length the nature of "infectious poisons" and reviewedthe work of Pasteur and other early bacteriologists quite thoroughly, withoutaccepting the view that infectious diseases might be caused by bacteria.He concluded that the agent of yellow fever was the product of the diseasedorganism itself.At this point a brief statement about the introduction of antisepticsurgery in Chicago seems appropriate. By 1878 the new method had secureda definite foothold. The conditions just before are described by RoswellPark:"There are those who can look back further than I can, and yet it hashappened that quite within my easy recollection the whole aspect of sur-