Louisa May Alcott - "The Mysterious Key And What It Opened"

George Bernard Shaw - "Pygmalion"

Lillian Elizabeth Roy - "Polly of Pebbly Pit"

Stephen Crane - "The Little Regiment"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
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Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Harvard Classics Volume 38

V >> Various >> The Harvard Classics Volume 38




Another instructive experiment is, to dress a granulating sore
with some of the putty above described, overlapping the sound
skin extensively; when we find, in the course of twenty-four
hours, that pus has been produced by the sore, although the
application has been perfectly antiseptic; and, indeed, the
larger the amount of carbolic acid in the paste, the greater is
the quantity of pus formed, provided we avoid such a proportion
as would act as a caustic. The carbolic acid, though it prevents
decomposition, induces suppuration--obviously by acting as a
chemical stimulus; and we may safely infer that putrescent
organic materials (which we know to be chemically acrid) operate
in the same way.

In so far, then, carbolic acid and decomposing substances are
alike; viz., that they induce suppuration by chemical
stimulation, as distinguished from what may be termed simple
inflammatory suppuration, such as that in which ordinary
abscesses originate--where the pus appears to be formed in
consequence of an excited action of the nerves, independently of
any other stimulus. There is, however, this enormous difference
between the effects of carbolic acid and those of decomposition;
viz., that carbolic acid stimulates only the surface to which it
is at first applied, and every drop of discharge that forms
weakens the stimulant by diluting it; but decomposition is a
self-propagating and self-aggravating poison, and, if it occur at
the surface of a severely injured limb, it will spread into all
its recesses so far as any extravasated blood or shreds of dead
tissue may extend, and lying in those recesses, it will become
from hour to hour more acrid, till it requires the energy of a
caustic sufficient to destroy the vitality of any tissues
naturally weak from inferior vascular supply, or weakened by the
injury they sustained in the accident.

Hence it is easy to understand how, when a wound is very large,
the crust beneath the rag may prove here and there insufficient
to protect the raw surface from the stimulating influence of the
carbolic acid in the putty; and the result will be first the
conversion of the tissues so acted on into granulations, and
subsequently the formation of more or less pus. This, however,
will be merely superficial, and will not interfere with the
absorption and organisation of extravasated blood or dead tissues
in the interior. But, on the other hand, should decomposition set
in before the internal parts have become securely consolidated,
the most disastrous results may ensue.

I left behind me in Glasgow a boy, thirteen years of age, who,
between three and four weeks previously, met with a most severe
injury to the left arm, which he got entangled in a machine at a
fair. There was a wound six inches long and three inches broad,
and the skin was very extensively undermined beyond its limits,
while the soft parts were generally so much lacerated that a pair
of dressing forceps introduced at the wound and pushed directly
inwards appeared beneath the skin at the opposite aspect of the
limb. From this wound several tags of muscle were hanging, and
among them was One consisting of about three inches of the
triceps in almost Its entire thickness; while the lower fragment
of the bone, which was broken high up, was protruding four inches
and a half, stripped of muscle, the skin being tucked in under
it. Without the assistance of the antiseptic treatment, I should
certainly have thought of nothing else but amputation at the
shoulder-joint; but, as the radial pulse could be felt and the
fingers had sensation, I did not hesitate to try to save the limb
and adopted the plan of treatment above described, wrapping the
arm from the shoulder to below the elbow in the antiseptic
application, the whole interior of the wound, together with the
protruding bone, having previously been freely treated with
strong carbolic acid. About the tenth day, the discharge, which
up to that time had been only sanious and serous, showed a slight
admixture of slimy pus; and this increased till (a few days
before I left) it amounted to about three drachms in twenty-four
hours. But the boy continued as he had been after the second day,
free from unfavorable symptoms, with pulse, tongue, appetite, and
sleep natural and strength increasing, while the limb remained as
it had been from the first, free from swelling, redness, or pain.
I. therefore, persevered with the antiseptic dressing; and,
before I left, the discharge was already somewhat less, while the
bone was becoming firm. I think it likely that, in that boy's
case, I should have found merely a superficial sore had I taken
off all the dressings at the end of the three weeks; though,
considering the extent of the injury, I thought it prudent to let
the month expire before disturbing the rag next the skin. But I
feel sure that, if I had resorted to ordinary dressing when the
pus first appeared, the progress of the case would have been
exceedingly different.

The next class of cases to which I have applied the antiseptic
treatment is that of abscesses. Here also the results have been
extremely satisfactory, and in beautiful harmony with the
pathological principles indicated above. The pyogenic membrane,
like the granulations of a sore, which it resembles in nature,
forms pus, not from any inherent disposition to do so, but only
because it is subjected to some preternatural stimulation. In an
ordinary abscess, whether acute or chronic, before it is opened
the stimulus which maintains the suppuration is derived from the
presence of pus pent up within the cavity. When a free opening is
made in the ordinary way, this stimulus is got rid of, but the
atmosphere gaining access to the contents, the potent stimulus of
decomposition comes into operation, and pus is generated in
greater abundance than before. But when the evacuation is
effected on the antiseptic principle, the pyogenic membrane,
freed from the influence of the former stimulus without the
substitution of a new one, ceases to suppurate (like the
granulations of a sore under metallic dressing), furnishing
merely a trifling amount of clear serum, and, whether the opening
be dependent or not, rapidly contracts and coalesces. At the same
time any constitutional symptoms previously occasioned by the
accumulation of the matter are got rid of without the slightest
risk of the irritative fever or hectic hitherto so justly dreaded
in dealing with large abscesses.

In order that the treatment may be satisfactory, the abscess must
be seen before it is opened. Then, except in very rare and
peculiar cases [Footnote: As an instance of one of these
exceptional cases, I may mention that of an abscess in the
vicinity of the colon, and afterwords proved by post-mortem
examination to have once communicated with it. Here the pus was
extremely offensive when evacuated, and exhibited vibros under
the microscope.], there are no septic organisms in the contents,
so that it is needless to introduce carbolic acid into the
interior. Indeed, such a procedure would be objectionable, as it
would stimulate the pyogenic membrane to unnecessary suppuration.
All that is requisite is to guard against the introduction of
living atmospheric germs from without, at the same time that free
opportunity is afforded for the escape of the discharge from
within.

I have so lately given elsewhere a detailed account of the method
by which this is effected (Lancet, July 27th, 1867), that I shall
not enter into it at present further than to say that the means
employed are the same as those described above for the
superficial dressing of compound fractures; viz., a piece of rag
dipped into the solution of carbolic add in oil to serve as an
antiseptic curtain, under cover of which the abscess is evacuated
by free incision, and the antiseptic paste to guard against
decomposition occurring in the stream of pus that flows out
beneath it; the dressing being changed daily until the sinus is
closed.

The most remarkable results of this practice in a pathological
point of view have been afforded by cases where the formation of
pus depended on disease of bone. Here the abscesses, instead of
forming exceptions to the general class in the obstinacy of the
suppuration, have resembled the rest in yielding in a few days
only a trifling discharge, and frequently the production of pus
has ceased from the moment of the evacuation of the original
contents. Hence it appears that caries, when no longer labouring
as heretofore under the irritation of decomposing matter, ceases
to be an opprobrium of surgery, and recovers like other
inflammatory affections. In the publication before alluded to, I
have mentioned the case of a middle-aged man with a psoas abscess
depending in diseased bone, in whom the sinus finally closed
after months of patient perseverance with the antiseptic
treatment. Since that article was written I have had another
instance of abscess equally gratifying, but the differing in the
circumstance that the disease and the recovery were more rapid in
their course. The patient was a blacksmith, who had suffered four
and a half months before I saw him from symptoms of ulceration of
cartilage in the left elbow. These had latterly increased in
severity so as to deprive him entirely of his night's rest and of
appetite. I found the region of the elbow greatly swollen, and on
careful examination found a fluctuating point at the outer aspect
of the articulation. I opened it on the antiseptic principle, the
incision evidently penetrating to the joint, giving exit to a few
drachms of pus. The medical gentleman under whose care he was
(Dr. Macgregor, of Glasgow) supervised the daily dressing with
the carbolic acid paste till the patient went to spend two or
three weeks at the coast, when his wife was entrusted with it.
Just two months after I opened the abscess, he called to show me
the limb, stating that the discharge had been, for at least two
weeks, as little as it was then, a trifling moisture upon the
paste, such as might be accounted for by the little sore caused
by the incision. On applying a probe guarded with an antiseptic
rag, I found that the sinus was soundly closed, while the limb
was free from swelling or tenderness; and, although he had not
attempted to exercise it much, the joint could already be moved
through a considerable angle. Here the antiseptic principle had
effected the restoration of a joint, which, on any other known
system of treatment, must have been excised.

Ordinary contused wounds are, of course, amenable to the same
treatment as compound fractures, which are a complicated variety
of them. I will content myself with mentioning a single instance
of this class of cases. In April last, a volunteer was
discharging a rifle when it burst, and blew back the thumb with
its metacarpal bone, so that it could be bent back as on a hinge
at the trapezial joint, which had evidently been opened, while
all the soft parts between the metacarpal bones of the thumb and
forefinger were torn through. I need not insist before my present
audience on the ugly character of such an injury. My house-
surgeon, Mr. Hector Cameron, applied carbolic acid to the whole
raw surface, and completed the dressing as if for compound
fracture. The hand remained free from pain, redness or swelling,
and with the exception of a shallow groove, all the wound
consolidated without a drop of matter, so that if it had been a
clean cut, it would have been regarded as a good example of
primary union. The small granulating surface soon healed, and at
present a linear cicatrix alone tells of the injury he has
sustained, while his thumb has all its movements and his hand a
fine grasp.

If the severest forms of contused and lacerated wounds heal thus
kindly under the antiseptic treatment, it is obvious that its
application to simple incised wounds must be merely a matter of
detail. I have devoted a good deal of attention to this class,
but I have not as yet pleased myself altogether with any of the
methods I have employed. I am, however, prepared to go so far as
to say that a solution of carbolic acid in twenty parts of water,
while a mild and cleanly application, may be relied on for
destroying any septic germs that may fall upon the wound during
the performance of an operation; and also that, for preventing
the subsequent introduction of others, the paste above described,
applied as for compound fractures, gives excellent results. Thus
I have had a case of strangulated inguinal hernia in which it was
necessary to take away half a pound of thickened omentum, heal
without any deep-seated suppuration or any tenderness of the sac
or any fever; and amputations, including one immediately below
the knee, have remained absolutely free from constitutional
symptoms.

Further, I have found that when the antiseptic treatment is
efficiently conducted, ligatures may be safely cut short and left
to be disposed of by absorption or otherwise. Should this
particular branch of the subject yield all that it promises,
should it turn out on further trial that when the knot is applied
on the antiseptic principle, we may calculate as securely as if
it were absent on the occurrence of healing without any deep-
seated suppuration, the deligation of main arteries in their
continuity will be deprived of the two dangers that now attend
it, viz., those of secondary haemorrhage and an unhealthy state
of the wound. Further, it seems not unlikely that the present
objection to tying an artery in the immediate vicinity of a large
branch may be done away with; and that even the innominate, which
has lately been the subject of an ingenious experiment by one of
the Dublin surgeons, on account of its well-known fatality under
the ligature for secondary haemorrhage, may cease to have this
unhappy character when the tissues in the vicinity of the thread,
instead of becoming softened through the influence of an
irritating decomposing substance, are left at liberty to
consolidate firmly near an unoffending though foreign body.

It would carry me far beyond the limited time which, by the rules
of the Association, is alone at my disposal, were I to enter into
the various applications of the antiseptic principle in the
several special departments of surgery.

There is, however, one point more that I cannot but advert to,
viz., the influence of this mode of treatment upon the general
healthiness of an hospital. Previously to its introduction the
two large wards in which most of my cases of accident and of
operation are treated were among the unhealthiest in the whole
surgical division of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, in consequence
apparently of those wards being unfavorably placed with reference
to the supply of fresh air; and I have felt ashamed when
recording the results of my practice, to have so often to allude
to hospital gangrene or pyaemia. It was interesting, though
melancholy, to observe that whenever all or nearly all the beds
contained cases with open sores, these grievous complications
were pretty sure to show themselves; so that I came to welcome
simple fractures, though in themselves of little interest either
for myself or the students, because their presence diminished the
proportion of open sores among the patients. But since the
antiseptic treatment has been brought into full operation, and
wounds and abscesses no longer poison the atmosphere with putrid
exhalations, my wards, though in other respects under precisely
the same circumstances as before, have completely changed their
character; so that during the last nine months not a single
instance of pysemia, hospital gangrene, or erysipelas has
occurred in them.

As there appears to be no doubt regarding the cause of this
change, the importance of the fact can hardly be exaggerated.




THE PHYSIOLOGICAL THEORY OF FERMENTATION
BY LOUIS PASTEUR
TRANSLATED BY
F. FAULKNER AND D. C. ROBB
AND REVISED


THE GERM THEORY AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO MEDICINE AND SURGERY
BY MM. PASTEUR, JOURBERT, AND CHAMBERLAND
TRANSLATED BY
H. C. ERNST, M. D.
PROFESSOR OF BACTERIOLOGY IN THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL


ON THE EXTENSION OF THE GERM THEORY TO THE ETIOLOGY OF CERTAIN
COMMON DISEASES
BY LOUIS PASTEUR
TRANSLATED BY H. C. ERNST, M. D.


INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Louis Pasteur was born at Dole, Jura, France, December 27, 1822,
and died near Saint-Cloud, September 28, 1895. His interest in
science, and especially in chemistry, developed early, and by the
time he was twenty-six he was professor of the physical sciences
at Dijon. The most important academic positions held by him later
were those as professor of chemistry at Strasburg, 1849; dean of
the Faculty of Sciences at Lille, 1854; science director of the
Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, 1857; professor of geology,
physics, and chemistry at the Ecole des Beaux Arts; Professor of
chemistry at the Sorbonne, 1867. After 1875 he carried on his
researches at the Pasteur Institute. He was a member of the
Institute, and received many honors from learned societies at
home and abroad.

In respect of the number and importance, practical as well as
scientific, of his discoveries, Pasteur has hardly a rival in the
history of science. He may be regarded as the founder of modern
stereo-chemistry; and his discovery that living organisms are the
cause of fermentation is the basis of the whole modern germ-
theory of disease and of the antiseptic method of treatment. His
investigations of the diseases of beer and wine; of pebrine, a
disease affecting silk-worms; of anthrax, and of fowl cholera,
were of immense commercial importance and led to conclusions
which have revolutionised physiology, pathology, and
therapeutics. By his studies in the culture of bacteria of
attenuated virulence he extended widely the practise of
inoculation with a milder form of various diseases, with a view
to producing immunity.

The following papers present some of the most important of his
contributions, and exemplify his extraordinary powers of lucid
exposition and argument.




TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER
FORMERLY A SOLDIER UNDER THE FIRST EMPIRE CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION
OF HONOR

The longer I live, the better I understand the kindness of thy
heart and the high quality of thy mind.

The efforts which I have devoted to these Studies, as well as
those which preceded them, are the fruit of thy counsel and
example.

Desiring to honor these filial remembrances, I dedicate this work
to thy memory.

L. PASTEUR.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Our misfortunes inspired me with the idea of these researches. I
undertook them immediately after the war of 1870, and have since
continued them without interruption, with the determination of
perfecting them, and thereby benefiting a branch of industry
wherein we are undoubtedly surpassed by Germany.

I am convinced that I have found a precise, practical solution of
the arduous problem which I proposed to myself--that of a process
of manufacture, independent of season and locality, which should
obviate the necessity of having recourse to the costly methods of
cooling employed in existing processes, and at the same time
secure the preservation of its products for any length of time.

These new studies are based on the same principles which guided
me in my researches on wine, vinegar, and the silkworm disease--
principles, the applications of which are practically unlimited.
The etiology of contagious diseases may, perhaps, receive from
them an unexpected light.

I need not hazard any prediction concerning the advantages likely
to accrue to the brewing industry from the adoption of such a
process of brewing as my study of the subject has enabled me to
devise, and from an application of the novel facts upon which
this process is founded. Time is the best appraiser of scientific
work, and I am not unaware that an industrial discovery rarely
produces all its fruit in the hands of its first inventor.

I began my researches at Clermont-Ferrand, in the laboratory, and
with the help, of my friend M. Duclaux, professor of chemistry at
the Faculty of Sciences of that town. I continued them in Paris,
and afterwards at the great brewery of Tourtel Brothers, of
Tantonville, which is admitted to be the first in France. I
heartily thank these gentlemen for their extreme kindness. I owe
also a public tribute of gratitude to M. Kuhn, a skillful brewer
of Chamalieres, near Clermont-Ferrand, as well as to M. Velten of
Marseilles, and to MM. de Tassigny, of Reims, who have placed at
my disposal their establishments and their products, with the
most praiseworthy eagerness.

L. PASTEUR.

Paris, June 1, 1879.




THE PHYSIOLOGICAL THEORY OF FERMENTATION

I. ON THE RELATIONS EXISTING BETWEEN OXYGEN AND YEAST


It is characteristic of science to reduce incessantly the number
of unexplained phenomena. It is observed, for instance, that
fleshy fruits are not liable to fermentation so long as their
epidermis remains uninjured. On the other hand, they ferment very
readily when they are piled up in heaps more or less open, and
immersed in their saccharine juice. The mass becomes heated and
swells; carbonic acid gas is disengaged, and the sugar disappears
and is replaced by alcohol. Now, as to the question of the origin
of these spontaneous phenomena, so remarkable in character as
well as usefulness for man's service, modern knowledge has taught
us that fermentation is the consequence of a development of
vegetable cells the germs of which do not exist in the saccharine
juices within fruits; that many varieties of these cellular
plants exist, each giving rise to its own particular
fermentation. The principal products of these various
fermentations, although resembling each other in their nature,
differ in their relative proportions and in the accessory
substances that accompany them, a fact which alone is sufficient
to account for wide differences in the quality and commercial
value of alcoholic beverages.

Now that the discovery of ferments and their living nature, and
our knowledge of their origin, may have solved the mystery of the
spontaneous appearance of fermentations in natural saccharine
juices, we may ask whether we must still regard the reactions
that occur in these fermentations as phenomena inexplicable by
the ordinary laws of chemistry. We can readily see that
fermentations occupy a special place in the series of chemical
and biological phenomena. What gives to fermentations certain
exceptional characters of which we are only now beginning to
suspect the causes, is the mode of life in the minute plants
designated under the generic name of ferments, a mode of life
which is essentially different from that in other vegetables, and
from which result phenomena equally exceptional throughout the
whole range of the chemistry of living beings.

The least reflection will suffice to convince us that the
alcoholic ferments must possess the faculty of vegetating and
performing their functions out of contact with air. Let us
consider, for instance, the method of vintage practised in the
Jura. The bunches are laid at the foot of the vine in a large
tub, and the grapes there stripped from them. When the grapes,
some of which are uninjured, others bruised, and all moistened by
the juice issuing from the latter, fill the tub--where they form
what is called the vintage--they are conveyed in barrels to large
vessels fixed in cellars of a considerable depth. These vessels
are not filled to more than three-quarters of their capacity.
Fermentation soon takes place in them, and the carbonic acid gas
finds escape through the bunghole, the diameter of which, in the
case of the largest vessels, is not more than ten or twelve
centimetres (about four inches). The wine is not drawn off before
the end of two or three months. In this way it seems highly
probable that the yeast which produces the wine under such
conditions must have developed, to a great extent at least, out
of contact with oxygen. No doubt oxygen is not entirely absent
from the first; nay, its limited presence is even a necessity to
the manifestation of the phenomena which follow. The grapes are
stripped from the bunch in contact with air, and the must which
drops from the wounded fruit takes a little of this gas into
solution. This small quantity of air so introduced into the must,
at the commencement of operations, plays a most indispensable
part, it being from the presence of this that the spores of
ferments which are spread over the surface of the grapes and the
woody part of the bunches derive the power of starting their
vital phenomena [Footnote: It has been marked in practice that
fermentation is facilitated by leaving the grapes on the bunches.
The reason of this has not yet been discovered. Still we have no
doubt that it may be attributed, principally, to the fact that
the interatices between the grapes, and the spaces between the
bunch leaves throughout, considerably increase the volume of air
placed at the service of the germs of ferment.]. This air,
however, especially when the grapes have been stripped from the
bunches, is in such small proportion, and that which is in
contact with the liquid mass is so promptly expelled by the
carbonic acid gas, which is evolved as soon as a little yeast has
formed, that it will readily be admitted that most of the yeast
is produced apart from the influence of oxygen, whether free or
in solution. We shall revert to this fact, which is of great
importance. At present we are only concerned in pointing out
that, from the mere knowledge of the practices of certain
localities, we are induced to believe that the cells of yeast,
after they have developed from their spores, continue to live and
multiply without the intervention of oxygen, and that the
alcoholic ferments have a mode of life which is probably quite
exceptional, since it is not generally met with in other species,
vegetable or animal.