The Paris AcadSmie des Sciences has awarded to Sir Almroth
Wright the Lecomte triennial prize of £2,000 for Lis remarkable bacteriological work. The Times of Monday published from its medical correspondent some account of Sir Almroth Wright's investigations at the Thirteenth General Hospital at Boulogne. During the war, owing to the diffi- culty of cleaning wounds quickly, doctors have returned to the free use of antiseptics as distinguished from aseptic treat- ment, which by intense cleanliness prevents germs from existing. Sir Almroth Wright recently attacked the free use of antiseptics even for war surgery. He showed that, as a man's beat protection against blood-poisoning is his own blood, the right treatment of wounds is to allow them to drain as freely as possible. The lymph exuding from a wound is thus kept pure, and this vary purity is antagonistic to bacteria. All doctors of course believe in free drainage, but if a wound is closed more than it need be by antiseptics the fluid does not properly escape. The lymph becomes decom- posed, and forms a culture medium for bacteria. Listerism, in fine, may be overdone. Sir Almroth Wright has used a wash of salt and citrate of soda to encourage the flow of lymph. But what offers still greater hope for the future is Sir Almroth Wright's "antiseptic vaccine." By inoculation, it is hoped, a soldier before going into battle may be made proof against the infection of wounds. That would be a revolution indeed.
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