tendencies. The attempt was unsuccessful and unsatisfactory. The
reason is now clear, because it is known that the brunette or the
blond, the old or the young, may become infected with the tubercle
bacillus. Since the condition depends upon whether one or the other
become infected with the generally present bacillus of tubercle, it is
evident that there can be no distinctive diathesis. It is more than
probable, moreover, that the cutaneous disease so long described as
lupus vulgaris is simply a tubercular ulcer of the skin, and not a
special disease of unknown causation.

The metastatic abscesses of pyæmia are clearly explained when the
surgeon remembers that they are simply due to a softened blood clot
containing pus-causing germs being carried through the circulation and
lodged in some of the small capillaries.

A patient suffering with numerous boils upon his skin has often been a
puzzle to his physician, who has in vain attempted to find some cause
for the trouble in the general health alone. Had he known that every
boil owed its origin to pus bacteria, which had infected a sweat gland
or hair follicle, the treatment would probably have been more
efficacious. The suppuration is due to pus germs either lodged upon
the surface of the skin from the exterior or deposited from the
current of blood in which they have been carried to the spot.

I have not taken time to go into a discussion of the methods by which
the relationship of micro-organisms to surgical affections has been
established; but the absolute necessity for every surgeon to be fully
alive to the inestimable value of aseptic and antiseptic surgery has
led me to make the foregoing statements as a sort of _résumé_ of the
relation of the germ theory of disease to surgical practice. It is