MASTER OF MODERN SURGERY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 195, 15 February 1912, Page 6

MASTER OF MODERN SURGERY

THE LATE LORD LISTER. "My lord, it is not a profession, it is not a nation, it is humanity itself, which, with uncovered head, salutes you." , These were the words used a few years ago by Mr. Bayard, late American Ambassador to the Court of St. James, towards the end of a speech at the Royal Society in which reference was made to the beneficent results of Lord Lister's life's work.

It has been stated by a high "London surgeon that Lord Lister succeeded in applying scientific and practical surgery to the benefit of mankind and to the sparing of human life and suffering more than any other person who has ever lived. This high praise, of course, Tefers to the lister treatment known as "antiseptic surgery." Lord Lister was a Quaker, and was born in 1827 in the' Essex village of Upton, now a part of Greater London. His J father was a wine merchant in the city of London, with a strong leaning towards scientific enquiry. After receiving his early education at a Tottenham school, kept by the Society of Friends, Lister proceeded to University College, and graduated B.A. in the University of London in 1847, at the age of twenty. Five years later he took his first medical degree, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of .Surgeons. But during the early part of that period he seems to have been particularly fortunate in studying Hinder Professor Sharper, who advised him "to take six weeks of Syme's Clinic." This he did, and the year 1853 found him in Edinburgh attending the vacation lectures of the most distinguished surgeon in the kingdom. This six weeks, however, grew into years,. but they mark a most interesting epoch in Lord Lister's career, since Professor Syme soon accepted him as a - son-in-law by granting him the hand of his daughter Agnes—a union whose happiness was terminated only by her death in 1893, leaving Lord Lister as lonely in his affections as he afterwards became solitary in his fame.

The skill and courage of Syme completely magnetised Lister, and a short time after the professor offered him an appointment which was to start his long connection with Scotland.- Lister's own skill attracted such widespread attention that he was offered and accepted the Regius Professorship of Surgery in the University of Glasgow. That was in 1860. It was here, in this capacity, that he "was destined to revolutionise the system of surgery then in vogue. Many of us have been charmed by the personality of the great doctor, but few of us have probably formed an adequate idea of his real services as a medical man.

Lister's connection with the Glasgow Royal Infirmary gave him a large practice, and through it he became acquainted with the terrible mortality which resulted from the infliction of surgical wounds. 'He tried many expedients to improve the salubrity of the wards. He insisted on the scrupulous washing of the hands by all those engaged in dressing wounds; in short, everything was done to find out the motive of the disease which then caused such havoc. Soon, however, Pasteur (who was a tanner) discovered that the real agents in the process of putrefaction were minute organisms in the air. Lister's genius seized this opportunity, and he immediately devised a means by which air was excluded. He selected carbolic acid as the best form of germ-killer, and with a solution of this, so weak as not to cause injury to the flesh, but sufficiently strong to annihilate minute animal life, he carefully washed out the wound and kept it "sweet," and he also sterilised every instrument that was to lie used upon it. He invented a carbolic acid spray, with which he destroyed the germs of gangrene, which he believed to be floating in the air, and thus capable of affecting the wound. Later, however, after repeated experiments, Lister abandoned the spray, thus admitting that an antiseptically treated and bandaged wound could not be affected by atmospheric, germs. ■.

The result of Lister's antiseptic treatment caused an immediate decrease in the number of deaths from surgical wounds. H'is discoveries were acclaimed by the whole world, and his fame was heralded far and wide. In 1869 he succeeded Professor Syme as Professor of Surgery in Edinburgh University, a post which he held until 1877, when he removed to London after accepting a similar professorship at King's College, and in 1896 he retired from practice.

The honors which followed his course were conspicuous, and in one respect unprecedented in Britain. He was the first member of the medical profession to be raised to the Peerage; he was created a Baron in 1897, having been previously made a Baronet in d'BB3. A sentence from the congratulatory letter which was sent to him on the occasion of his eightieth birthday by the Council of the Royal College of Surgetns, reads: "As time passes the blessings which have followed your life's work have been innumerable, and the knowledge that they become each year more and more manifest must, we feel assured, be a source of extreme consolation to you in your distinguished and honorable retirement." Of late years Lord Lister resided at a seaside cottage on the coast of Kent, and it was understood that he hardly ever left his room.