It was
L'Année terrible
poetized by Victor Hugo,
La Débâcle
narrated by Émile Zola.
In this winter of 1870-1871 which saw the Paris Commune succeed the Franco-Prussian war, the wounded died en masse and
"the most eminent masters of surgery, terrified, came to doubt their art"
, discoursed Dr. Paul Reclus .
Asepsis of wounds and surgical instruments was practiced by only a handful of doctors and infections killed up to two-thirds of those operated on.
The renowned Auguste Nélaton,
“desperate to have lost 70 patients out of 70 operated on (…), said that a golden statue should be erected to whoever found a way to prevent purulent infection, the cause of this appalling mortality”
, says Orieulx de la Porte in a book dedicated to the surgeon Alphonse Guérin.
Read alsoWhen science was wrong: miasmas, these pestilences from which epidemics were born
This one would have, we are told, deserved this golden statue.
Because at this terrible end of the year
“a noise ran through the hospitals which caused an unspeakable stupor: the surgeon Alphonse Guérin (…) had…
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