Top Highlights

• Because strong antiseptics killed human cells just as well as they killed bacteria, applying them to deep wounds was actually counterproductive, because the antiseptics killed many of the body’s key defenders, white blood cells called leucocytes, along with the bacteria. It was essential to keep those white blood cells alive and active. “The leucoc...
• Wright was very sure of his results and had no qualms about setting the surgeons straight as forcefully and directly as possible. At first the surgeons simply refused to listen. They
• Wright welcomed the changes but still believed that surgeons tended to overuse antiseptics.
• It all boiled down to a story that was told after the war of a veteran who had been gassed, coughing his lungs out in a hospital. He was unable to speak, so he scrawled a note to his brother: “This is what modern science has done for me.”
• alcohol.” But he refused to become lost. He decided that the best response to the war was measured thinking, cool logic, the careful application of science. He was not naïve. He understood that science had created terrible engines of war. But he also believed that science, properly used, could undo much of the damage men had done.