Antiseptic surgery : its principles, practice, history and results / by W. Watson Cheyne.

  • Cheyne, William Watson, Sir, 1852-1932.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Antiseptic surgery : its principles, practice, history and results / by W. Watson Cheyne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    It was thus evident that there was a something present in the air, other than the gases of the air which had the power of bringing about fermentative changes in boiled liquids, and that this something could be destroyed by heat. Some further experiments which Schwann performed with reference to the alcoholic fermentation furnish additional evidence against the view that the gases of the air are the causes of putrefaction. A solution of cane sugar having been mixed with yeast, four flasks were quite filled with the mixture and then corked. These flasks were placed in boiling water for an equal length of time (ten minutes each). They were then inverted over heated mercury, and air was introduced so as to displace one-third to one-fourth of the fluid. The flasks were afterwards corked under mercury and kept at a tempera- ture of 63° to / 7 F. In two flasks the air thus introduced had been previously heated, in the other two it had not been so treated. In four to six weeks the flasks which had received the unheated air burst, their contents having undergone alcoholic fermentation. The other two flasks remained unchanged for more than three months. Schwann states that this latter experiment with heated air is generally, but not always, successful, and he explains this by the supposition that after the heating of the mercury, and in the processes of uncorking and corking, organic matter, which had not been previously heated, might very possibly mix with the mercury and enter the flasks. (This view has since been proved to be correct by Pasteur.) It is but fair to refer here to the experiments on spontaneous generation published in 1836 by Franz Schulze. These will be described at a later period. They are, however, of interest here, because Schulze anticipated Schwann in the principle of admitting air previously acted on in some way or other, in his case chemically, to Appert’s preserves. Schwann’s experiments were repeated and confirmed by Ure in 1840' and by Helmholtz in 1843.2 The latter author, in order to test the oxygen view still further, prepared an infusion in the usual manner in a vessel into which platinum electrodes were fixed. After the infusion had remained unaltered for some 1 Journal fur pralitische Chemic, xix.