and hurried account of the characteristics of bacteria, let me
conclude my address by discussing the relation of bacteria to the
diseases most frequently met with by the surgeon.

Mechanical irritations produce a very temporary and slight
inflammation, which rapidly subsides, because of the tendency of
nature to restore the parts to health. Severe injuries, therefore,
will soon become healed and cured if no germs enter the wound.

Suppuration of operative and accidental wounds was, until recently,
supposed to be essential. We now know, however, that wounds will not
suppurate if kept perfectly free from one of the dozen forms of
bacteria that are known to give rise to the formation of pus.

The doctrine of present surgical pathology is that suppuration will
not take place if pus-forming bacteria are kept out of the wound,
which will heal by first intention without inflammation and without
inflammatory fever.

In making this statement I am not unaware that there is a certain
amount of fever following various severe wounds within twenty-four
hours, even when no suppuration occurs. This wound fever, however, is
transitory; not high; and entirely different from the prolonged
condition of high temperature formerly observed nearly always after
operations and injuries. The occurrence of this "inflammatory,"
"traumatic," "surgical," or "symptomatic" fever, as it was formerly
called, means that the patient has been subjected to the poisonous
influence of putrefactive germs, the germs of suppuration, or both.

We now know why it is that certain cases of suppuration are not