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SURGERY AND OPHTHALMOLOGY. 489
to enclose in a healing wound foreign tissues or substances
are procedures belonging to the most recent times.
Transfusion of blood after great haemorrhage was again
looked upon with favour at the end of the 18th century and
was made the subject of careful investigation by J.
BLUNDELL. PREVOST, DUMAS and other physiologists
who studied the question recommended the transfusion of
defibrinated blood; PANUM advised that human blood
alone should be used. The subject of transfusion came to
be regarded in another light when it was recognized that
the beneficial effect of the operation does not depend upon
the increase of blood but to the heightened intravascular
pressure consequent upon the addition made to the con­
tents of the vessels.*
The satisfactory results achieved by operative surgery at
the present day are very largely due to the strictly methodical
employment of antiseptic measures which in the two last
decades have received universal recognition.f With this a
new period began in the history of surgery : how far and
how deeply to influence that science can scarcely be cal­
culated precisely.
Special branches of surgery have for the first time met \
with a scientific treatment in the 19th century and have
become separately-taught subjects.
Thus dentistry was by degrees withdrawn from the
hands of ignorant barbers and quacks and placed in those
of doctors who investigated the relation of diseases of the
teeth to the other diseases of the body and established a
scientific treatment of the former.
The diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the ear were
materially advanced by the improvements in the cathateri-
zation of the Eustachian tube introduced by A. CLELAND.
The artificial illumination of the tympanic membrane, the
* E. v. BERGMANN: Die Schicksale der Transfusion im letzten Decennium
Berlin 1883.
f And for which the thanks of mankind at large as well as of the profession
are due to Sir JOSEPH LISTER, Bart.—E. H. H.