hese two great maladies we know not; but statistics show
that since the beginning of Pasteur's discoveries the one disease has
diminished and the other increased in almost a corresponding ratio.
Meanwhile, however, surgery has opposed itself not only to cancers but
to all kinds of tumors, until danger from these sores has been greatly
lessened. The removal of internal tumors such as the ovarian, is no
longer, except in complicated and neglected cases, a matter of serious
import. Such work is performed in almost every country town, and the
amount of human life thus rescued from impending death is very great.
The work of lithotomy is not any longer regarded with the dread which
formerly attended it. In fact, every kind of disease and injury which
in its own nature is subject to surgical remedy has been disarmed of
its terror. The eye and the ear and all of the more delicate organs
have become subject to repair and amendment to a degree that may well
excite wonder and gratify philanthropy.

But it is not only in the actual processes of surgery that this great
improvement in human art may be noted. The treatment of wounds with
respect to their cure by preserving them from bacterial and other
poisons has been so greatly improved that it is now regarded almost as
a crime to permit suppuration and other horrible processes which were
formerly supposed to be the necessary concomitants of healing. The
hospital, whether military or civil, was formerly a scene that might
well horrify and make sick a visitant. It was putrefaction everywhere.
It was stench and poisonous effluvia. The conditions were such as to
make sick if not destroy even those who were well. How then could the
injured sufferers escape?

It is one of the crowning glories of our time that no such scene now
exists in any civilized country. No such will ever exist again, unless
science should lose its grip on the human mind and the civilized life
subside into barbarism. The surgeon would now be held in ill-repute
that should permit to any considerable degree the processes of
putrefaction to take place in a wound of which he has had the care.
The introduction of antiseptic and aseptic methods has made him a
master in this respect. The skillful surgeon bids defiance to the
microbes that hover in swarming millions ravenous for admission to
every hurt done to the human body. To them a wound is a festival. To
them a sore is a royal banquet to which through the invisible re