1912] oil Lord Lister. 563 



lecturer, and that he was not a briUiant operator. You and I can 

 laugh at such statements. Lister's lectures were all that could be 

 desired. His suliject-matter was always interesting — generally in- 

 tensely so ; his thoughts were clear and well defined, and he conveyed 

 them to his hearers in choice and vivid language which left no doubt 

 as to his meaning. As to his operating slowly, did he not tell us 

 that the advent of ansesthesia by chloroform had rendered it un- 

 necessary and undesirable to hurry through the work ? Lister was 

 thinking out and developing the antiseptic system at that time, and 

 we were privileged to listen day by day as he informed us of his 

 difficulties and how he proposed to overcome them ; and so we 

 watched the progress of those early stages which laid the foundation 

 for the final triumph. . . . Above and beyond all petty details rises 

 the towering personality of the man while the mind dwells fondly on 

 the grandeur and beneficence of his achievements." (J. W. Allan). 



From another of Lister's Glasgow students, and one who was his 

 house-surgeon in the Royal Infirmary, Dr. Jas. Coats (now Colonel 

 Coats), who was among the first to practise antiseptic surgery in 

 private, an interesting letter of reminiscences has been received, 

 from which the following is culled : — 



" One day when Lister was visiting his wards in the Glasgow 

 Royal Infirmary, there was a little girl whose elbow-joint had been 

 excised, and this had to be dressed daily. Lister undertook this 

 dressing himself. The little creature bore the pain without com- 

 plaint, aud Avhen finished she suddenly produced from under the 

 clothes a dilapidated doll, one leg of which had burst, allowing the 

 sawdust to escape. She handed the doll to Lister, who gravely 

 examined it, then asking for a needle and thread he sat down and 

 stitched the rent, and then returned the dolly to its gratified owner." 



On one occasion on which Lister visited my wards in the Royal 

 Infirmary, after he had been for some time in London, we were walk- 

 ing together from a ward in one part of the building to a ward in 

 another, by means of a gangway of Avood and glass, w^hen Lister 

 remarked : " Macewen, do you find this bridge a convenience to 

 your work, for if so, you have to thank me, as I Avas instrumental in 

 getting it put up ? " I replied, " Yes, it is a convenience, but it 

 is nothing compared to the greater gangway you provided, by 

 which the patients after operation cross directly from the wards 

 into the midst of life and health." I received a kindly look, a 

 suppressed smile, and a pressure of the arm. ... 



In Edinburgh, though his system was met by some with deter- 

 mined opposition, it was adopted more or less thoroughly by others, 

 and by many of the younger men enthusiastically. The students, 

 though doubtful at first, began to observe his results, and soon 

 became admirers of Lister and his work. 



When Lister entered the clinical theatre of the old Infirmary to 

 deliver before a crowded audience his last lecture there, he was pre- 



VoL. XX. (No. 106) 2 p 



