something like 100 millimeters distance between the electrodes, and
even to a distance of 150 millimeters, when carbon pencils were used
as electrodes, but it always remained standing up in a point.
--_Electrical Engineer._

* * * * *




THE RELATION OF BACTERIA TO PRACTICAL SURGERY.[1]

[Footnote 1: The address in surgery delivered before the Medical
Society of the State of Pennsylvania, June 4, 1890.]

By JOHN B. ROBERTS, A.M., M.D., Professor of Surgery in the Woman's
Medical College and in the Philadelphia Polyclinic.


The revolution which has occurred in practical surgery since the
discovery of the relation of micro-organisms to the complications
occurring in wounds has caused me to select this subject for
discussion. Although many of my hearers are familiar with the germ
theory of disease, it is possible that it may interest some of them to
have put before them in a short address a few points in bacteriology
which are of value to the practical surgeon.

It must be remembered that the groups of symptoms which were formerly
classed under the heads "inflammatory fever," "symptomatic fever,"
"traumatic fever," "hectic fever," and similar terms, varying in name