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Listerism must be credited, not only with having added immensely to the safety of the major operations of surgery, but also with having led to great improvement of their technics by reason of the greatly increased frequency with which it has come to be thought justifiable to practise them; what we do again and again we are apt in the end to do well, whereas that which we turn to only in despair and as rarely as possible, we do clumsily and imperfectly.
The controversy over spontaneous generation, which, thanks to Pasteur and Tyndall, had just been brought to a termination, made it clear that no bacterium need be feared where an antecedent bacterium had not found lodgment; Listerism in surgery had now shown how much might be accomplished towards preventing the access of germs to abraded surfaces of the body and destroying those that already had found lodgment there.
The first to discover an efficient surgical anaesthetic was Crawford W. Long, of Georgia. The news of Morton's achievement spread broadcast, and it was at once realized that it was destined to revolutionize surgery. It certainly has done that, and in no less degree than was afterward accomplished by Listerism.
Another of the great divisions of the healing art, that of midwifery, has been enhanced quite as much as general surgery by the employment of Listerism.
Listerism has been unjustly alleged by a few to be unworthy of the appreciation in which it is held by the great majority of medical men of all countries; simple cleanliness, it has been urged, is quite as efficient as the full Listerian precautions. This is begging the question, for simple cleanliness, "chemical cleanliness," is all that Listerism purports to accomplish.
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