Bandages
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For the growth of bacteria there must be a food supply, moisture, in most cases oxygen, and a certain minimum temperature (see bacteriology). These conditions have been studied and applied in preserving of food and the ancient practice of embalming the dead, which is the earliest known systematic use of antiseptics.
In early inquiries, there was much emphasis on the prevention of putrefaction, and procedures were carried out to find how much of an agent must be added to a given solution in order to prevent development of undesirable bacteria. However, for various reasons, this method was inaccurate, and today an antiseptic is judged by its effect on pure cultures of defined pathogenic celicular single helix microbes and their vegetative and spore forms. The standardization of antiseptics has been implemented in many instances, and a water solution of phenol of a certain fixed strength is now used as the standard to which other antiseptics are compared. | |
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