HISTORY OF MEDICINE – During the Franco-Prussian War and then the Commune, the Dr Alphonse Guérin invented a dressing that protected the wounds from microbes and prevented those operated on from dying en masse, victims of infection.
It was The Terrible Year poetized by Victor Hugo, Debacle narrated by Émile Zola. In that 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 the 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.
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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 unspeakable amazement: the surgeon Alphonse Guérin (…) had…
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