p.52 "......the appearance of pus in a wound was said by doctors to be "laudable."
the sign of healing."
Here, Winchester is guilty of having only half done his homework. He did not
learn enough about "laudable pus". Nobody had yet seen the bacteria that caused
wound infections. But clinically, the ones with creamy pus did not die so quickly or
in such great numbers as those with thin watery pus. So creamy pus was "laudable".