Scientific method in biology / by Elizabeth Blackwell.

  • Blackwell, Elizabeth, 1821-1910.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Scientific method in biology / by Elizabeth Blackwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    shock in necessary surgical operations* ; the dis- appearance of blood-poisoning, hospital gangrene, and erysipelas, which were the scourges of our public institutions in a former generation, are im- mense gains, due to the discovery of anaesthetics, antiseptics, and advancing sanitation. These blessings are the direct outcome of persevering and skilful clinical observation, of careful work in the laboratory, of humane experiment, and of happy accident; they are not derived from cruel experimentation. The successful control of that terrible disease —puerperal fever—which formerly destroyed such a multitude of women, is a striking conquest of humane method in modern medicine. When I was a student in La Maternite of Paris in 1849, this destructive malady of lying-in women pro- duced a mortality varying from 10 to 15 per cent. But when I visited La Maternite in 1889 the mortality was reduced to a little over 1 per cent. This was due to rigorous cleanliness, sanitation, and the use of antiseptics, directed by the skilful sage femme en chef Madame Henri, in * The former horrors of the hospital operating-room are graphically described from personal observation in Sir B. W. Richardson’s treatise, ‘The Mastery of Pain.’