Those discoveries, he said, which had deeply modified the state of surgery, and particularly the treatment of wounds, could be traced back to one principle. This principle was applicable to various facts, and explained Lister’s success, and the fact that certain operations had become possible, and that certain cases, formerly considered hopeless, were now being recorded on all sides. Real progress lay there. Sédillot’s concluding paragraph deserves to be handed down as a comment precious from a contemporary: “We shall have seen the conception and birth of a new surgery, a daughter of Science and of Art, which will be one of the greatest wonders of our century, and with which the names of Pasteur and Lister will remain gloriously connected.” In that treatise, Sédillot invented a new word to characterize all that body of organisms and infinitely small vibriones, bacteria, bacteridia, etc.; he proposed to designate them all under the generic term of _microbe_. This word had, in Sédillot’s eyes, the advantage of being short and of having a general signification. He however felt some scruple before using it, and consulted Littré, who replied on February 26, 1878: “Dear colleague and friend, _microbe_ and _microbia_ are very good words. To designate the animalculæe I should give the preference to _microbe_, because, as you say, it is short, and because it leaves microbia, a feminine noun, for the designation of the state of a microbe.” Certain philologists criticized the formation of the word in the name of the Greek language. Microbe, they said, means an animal with a short life, rather than an infinitesimally small animal. Littré gave a second testimonial to the word microbe-- “It is true,” he wrote to Sédillot, “that μιχρόβιος and μαχρόβιος probably mean in Greek _short-lived_ and _long-lived_. But, as you justly remark, the question is not what is most purely Greek, but what is the use made in our language of the Greek roots. Now the Greek has βίος, life, βιοῦν, to live, βιούς, living, the root of which may very well figure under the form of _bi_, _bia_ with the sense _living_, in _aërobia_, _anaërobia_ and _microbe_. I should advise you not to trouble to answer criticisms, but let the word stand for itself, which it will no doubt do.” Pasteur, by adopting it, made the whole world familiar with it. Though during that month of March, 1878, Pasteur had had the pleasure of hearing Sédillot’s prophetic words at the Académie des Sciences, he had heard very different language at the Académie de Médecine. Colin of Alfort, from the isolated corner where he indulged in this misanthropy, had renewed his criticisms of Pasteur. As he spoke unceasingly of a state of virulent anthrax devoid of bacteridia, Pasteur, losing patience, begged of the Académie to nominate a Commission of Arbitration.