217 



NATURAL SCIENCE 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 56. Vol. IX. OCTOBER. 1896. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Sir Joseph Lister's Address. 



THE Presidential Address delivered by Sir Joseph Lister before the 

 British Association, was eminently uncontroversial in character, 

 and does not demand any detailed comment in these columns. 

 Speaking as an exponent of the healing art to an assembly which 

 excludes medicine and surgery from its discussions, he confined his 

 attention to a quiet review of some of the more striking benefits which 

 these arts have received from pure science. The increasing inter- 

 dependence of science and medical and surgical practice is indeed 

 a fruitful theme for retrospect to one who has played so considerable 

 a part in the development of modern surgery, and Sir Joseph was at 

 no loss for matter for his discourse. He touched, naturally enough, 

 upon those subjects in particular with which he has, in the past, been 

 more specially concerned. After some passing remarks on Rontgen 

 rays and anaesthetics, he devoted the bulk of his address to the 

 appHcations of bacteriology to medicine in general and surgery in 

 particular. No portion of the address will have been listened to with 

 more interest than that dealing with the development of antiseptic 

 surgery, but such is the modesty of its chief pioneer, that no one who 

 cannot read between the lines would gather, from his words, how 

 great was the part Lister played in its inception and perfection. It 

 is probable that there has never been a practical application of a 

 scientific principle which has so directly saved human life as this. Not 

 merely has the mortality from wounds and operations been enormously 

 reduced, and the terrible results of wound infections become chiefly 

 a matter of history, but operations which were before undreamed of 

 have become almost commonplace owing to the security given by 

 Listerian methods. Sir Joseph eagerly ascribed to Pasteur the 

 foundations upon which antiseptic surgery has been built, and to those 

 other bacteriologists, especially Koch, who have done so much to 

 increase our knowledge of wound infections and their intimate causes, 

 he dealt a full meed of credit. He touched also on the work of 



