BEFORE AND AFTER LISTER 189 



cent.), and 359 among the unprotected, with 48 deaths 

 (7.47 per cent.), over nine times as many deaths pro- 

 portionately! The one reason for this splendid showing 

 is the use of the antityphoid inoculation. If instead of its 

 being only voluntary in the British army it had been com- 

 pulsory as in our own army, the results would have been 

 even better. And yet a blatant band of men and women 

 both in England and our own country are doing all they 

 can to oppose the use of this life-preserving remedy! 



Let us now in conclusion take a general review of the 

 surgical progress I have so inadequately sketched. 



During the horrible days of Pare, Bell, Simpson, and 

 our own Civil War there was still gradual improvement, 

 but no fundamental change occurred for three centuries 

 after Pare introduced the ligature and banished the boil- 

 ing oil. 



But about the middle of the nineteenth century, and 

 especially in its last quarter, experimental research took 

 the field. Everything that could be put to the test of 

 accurate experiment in medicine and surgery was thor- 

 oughly investigated physically, physiologically, chemically, 

 microscopically, biologically, bacteriologically. Labora- 

 tories were founded and research workers vied with each 

 other in countless investigations. A flood of light was 

 thrown upon every problem. And see the result in the 

 long list I have just read to you! Medicine proper, ob- 

 stetrics, all the specialties, sanitation and hygiene, furnish 

 equally impressive calendars of progress principally the 

 result of experimental research. 



Chief among these experimental researches were those 

 of Pasteur (of whom I have said far too little for want 

 of time) and of Lister. They inaugurated a wholly new 

 era in surgery. 



Then followed the battle for the germ theory and anti- 

 septic surgery, ending in final victory. Meantime a new 

 science, bacteriology, was born. 



Next came the wide extension and application of the 



