DISEASES OF THE SKIN
The skin may be afflicted with so many diseases that one might think that it has little protection against infection, yet we have reason to believe that the intact skin is germ-proof. We know now that for centuries surgeons carried infections on their hands and, when they operated, it was taken as a matter of course that the wounds would become infected. Then Pasteur showed that infection was due to germs, and Lister of England demonstrated that these infections were carried by the surgeons. Meanwhile the surgeons were fairly safe themselves. If they refrained from sticking needles into their fingers or cutting themselves with scalpels, it was their patients and not themselves who died of erysipelas or pined with suppurating wounds.
But a skin without the slightest break through its surface is a difficult thing to achieve. A bacterium is exceedingly minute. Wounds invisibly small may let a horde of them into the moist warm flesh where they thrive. Even the surgeon’s eagerness to obtain great cleanliness may itself defeat his purpose. Frequent washes with soap remove the soft grease normal to the skin, which then dries and cracks. But only to an unusually discriminating congregation can it be hinted that cleanliness is not an absolute law. It is a highly important one. Mankind has been afflicted with many diseases which could have been avoided by reasonable cleanliness.
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