Presidential Address. 7 



If I may still trespass on your patience with a further personal 

 reminiscence, I should like to make reference to another member of 

 the professioriate of the University of Edinburgh, contemporary with 

 Huxley. I refer to Lord Lister, who, while I had the 

 good fortune to be his pupil, was deeply immersed in the 

 problem of antiseptic surgery, and whose researches in that 

 direction have done more for the science of surgery, and 

 the saving of life by surgical treatment, than any previous 

 discovery. As has been well said, Lister's scientific work, and the 

 consequent adoption of his antiseptic methods (though, as I well 

 remember, they were very much scoffed at by some of his colleagues), 

 have rightly been admitted not only to have laid the foundation, but 

 also to have reared the superstructure of modern surgery, with the 

 result that, by the adoption of his methods, operations are to-day 

 undertaken with impunity, which before his time would not have 

 been dreamt of. Lister may, in fact, be regarded as one of the most 

 signal benefactors of suffering humanity, and were it at all necessary 

 to adduce evidence in support of the statement, the following (from 

 a speech by Mr. Bayard at the Royal Society) might be quoted, when 

 in addressing Lord Lister, he said : " My Lord, it is not a pro- 

 fession, it is not a nation, it is humanity itself, which with uncovered 

 head salutes you." To show what humanity is saved, as a result 

 of Lister's labours and discoveries in the domain of antisepticism, 

 I quote from an address delivered by Sir Frederick Treves, before 

 the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in which he depicts what 

 takes place in a septic wound, or a wound allowed to become septic 

 through disregard of antiseptic precautions. 



" Let us suppose that a wound has been sustained, and that 

 certain germs or micro-organisms have been introduced thereto. These 

 germs, finding themselves in a favourable soil, proceed to flourish 

 and multiply. They multiply in no uncertain number. Those who 

 are curious in the matter of birth-rates may be interested to know 

 that the progeny of one single cell may, at the end of twenty-four 

 hours, be i6 millions. They are not only prolific, but they produce 

 a subtle poison called a toxin. The invasion, therefore, of the body 

 by a poison-producing host, capable of multiplying by millions in 

 a day, is a matter of some concern. Now, how is this germ-invasion 

 met? There is a rush of blood to the wounded part, the vessels 

 around the damaged area enlarge to their utmost capacity, in order 

 that as much blood as possible may be brought to the invaded quarter. 

 Blood is hurried to the part for precisely the same reason that an 

 army is hurried to the frontier when a country is attacked. At the 

 seat of the wound an invading force has landed ; their w^eapon is 

 poison ; they need neither transport, auxiliaries, nor stores, for they 

 live on the body itself, and can add to their numbers without 

 extraneous aid. The blood, on the other hand, contains certain cells 

 or corpuscles, poor, pale, flabby-looking objects called leucocytes, 

 which are, however, born microbe-killers, and have a passion for 

 fighting which no racial hatred among men could even faintly imitate. 



