Osteotomy as an indicator of antiseptic surgical practice.

In the UK Government's 1993 review of science and technology the statement is made that "the interval between scientific discovery and practical application is diminishing".' Two changes might explain such an acceleration of the acceptance of scientific innovation. Alterations may have occurred in the way that scientific ideas are spread, with concomitant increases in their rates of diffusion. On the other hand, a decline may have occurred in the resistance to innovation, as epitomized by Max Planck' s comment that "a scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it".2 Historians of science and medicine have paid a good deal of attention to such changes in their studies on the diffusion of ideas and technologies and their reception. An instance is the introduction of antiseptic methods into surgery. The differences between the explanations for post-operative inflammation and sepsis that were accepted and promulgated by surgeons in the 1860s and in the 1890s are so greatparticularly with respect to germ theory-and their impact on practice and research was so profound, that a good case can be made for categorizing the changes as a Kuhnian paradigm shift.3 Lister's own papers, and the accounts by his pupils and the adherents to his system, provide a full description of the development of his methods, its rituals, and its impact.4 Despite the changes and modifications that Lister included during its first decade, its underlying principle remained constant-"the exclusion of all microbes from wounds"and its central technical feature, the use of carbolic acid as an antibacterial agent, remained in essence unchanged. In its full development, the method used carbolic to treat the skin