xliv INTRODUCTION 
Operations on healthy and diseased joints were introduced—the bold removal 
of loose bodies from joints, drainage of chronic synovitis, incision into 
diseased joints, and so on. Extensive operations for cancer of the breast 
became justifiable, and his results as regards recurrence in those early days 
were very excellent. Were it necessary, it would be easy to enumerate many 
improvements and fresh operations which were carried out by him from the very 
first. Indeed much of the present operative work was directly initiated by Lister, 
although he published very little with regard to it, for as such innovations 
seemed to follow naturally from the altered course of wounds, Lister did not 
consider that the publication of improvements in individual operations was 
necessary. The great charm of Lister’s hospital work and lectures in the early 
days was not only the way in which the wounds healed, and in which the 
patients operated on recovered without pain, or fever, or illness, but also the 
fresh point of view from which every surgical affection was considered, and the 
manner in which the ancient canons of surgical practice were one by one over- 
thrown. 
