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.

    43/656 (page 15)
    ciin be arrested by cotton wool, and, secondly, by oxygen gas (in the case of milk, yolk of egg, &c.). Two years later there appeared another paper by Schroeder referring to those substances which he had previously failed to preserve, and in this research he has recoiurse to the use of higher temperatures than formerly.^ Yolk of egg, after being heated for half an hour in a closed glass vessel, at a temperature of 130° C. (266° F.), was placed in a flask the neck of which was stuffed when hot with cotton wool, and was again boiled with a little water. This remained for seventy days unchanged. He succeeded in a similar manner with meat and milk, and in the case of the latter he found that prolonged boiling at 100° C. was sufficient. From these facts he gives up his formerly expressed view as to the spontaneous fermentation of organic substances under the influence of oxygen, and concludes that in these fluids spores were present which could resist a boiling temperature, the development of these spores being, according to him, the cause of the fermentation. He further considers that these spores were present originally in the milk, and were not intro- duced from the air, becaiise he finds that milk which has not been boiled at all putrefies sooner than pure boiled milk exposed to the air. It may be interesting to mention here that similar difficul- ties were experienced by Appert in his attempts to preserve milk. He succeeded by the following method: ' Condense the milk to two-thirds of its volume, strain it, then put it in the bottle, seal and boil in a water bath for two hours.' In order to prevent the cream from separating he found it well to add yolk of egg. This did not increase the difficulty in preserving it. Still further evidence disproving the gaseous theory is fur- nished by Pasteur.2 He repeated Schwann's experiments and was successful with most fluids, but for a time he failed in the case of milk. He, however, succeeded when he boiled the milk under pressm-e at 110° C. (230° F.) for one or two minutes, heated air being then allowed to come in contact with it; and ' Annaleii der Cliomia und Pharmacie, cxvii. 1861. ^ Annales des Sciences Naturclles, serie iv. t. xvi. ] 861: Zoologie