Clostridium Perfringens: A Flesh-Eating Bacterium Living in Your Garden

Abstract

Gas gangrene is a painful, rapidly developing and potentially fatal infection despite antibiotic treatment. During the First World War thousands of soldiers died from this disease. Dr Alexis Carrel pioneered a controversial method of irrigating wounds with Dakin's solution to destroy Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium found in heavily fertilised soils that causes gas gangrene. Although this method is no longer used due to the discovery of antibiotics, many of his other ideas, such as scientifically determining the type and number of bacteria and delaying the closure of a wound until the bacteria had been eradicated, are still used today.