154 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



Erichsen, the then foremost London surgeon and Lister's 

 early chief at University College Hospital uttered in 

 1874, just as surgery was on the eve of its very greatest 

 triumph. 



Surgery in its mechanical and manipulative proc- 

 esses, in its art in fact, is approaching, if it has not 

 already attained to, something like finality of per- 

 fection. 2 



Anesthesia in 1846 and 1847 had robbed operations of 

 the terror of agonizing pain. Quick, "slap-dash surgery" 

 a necessity before the days of anesthesia then gave 

 way to delicate, painstaking, artistic surgery. Antiseptics 

 thirty years later relieved the patients from the terrors 

 of death and gave to the surgeon restful nights and joy- 

 ous days. 



Hence when I received the kind invitation to address 

 you it seemed to me that I could possibly render you 

 some service by describing the state of surgery "Before 

 and After Lister," since my testimony would be that of 

 an eyewitness. 



When the Apostle Paul was about to be bound and 

 scourged you remember that he claimed immunity as a 

 Roman. "With a great sum obtained I this freedom," 

 explained the chief captain. "But I," said the Apostle, 

 with justifiable pride, "was free born." "With a great 

 sum" of the most strenuous labor the men of my genera- 

 tion acquired the knowledge and the skill and the immense 

 satisfaction of the antiseptic and aseptic era but you, 

 you are "free born" and have entered into a rightful 

 heritage from your fathers. "Before Lister" and "After 

 Lister" in the surgical calendar are the equivalents of 

 "B.C." and "A.D." of our common chronology. 



Modern military surgery may be said to begin with 

 Ambroise Pare in the middle of the sixteenth century. 



2 Wrench, Lister's Life and Work, p. 281. 



