Xi INTRODUCTION 
his time of residence in University College Hospital as House Physician and 
House Surgeon with Dr. Walsh and Mr. Erichsen respectively, he went to 
Edinburgh, taking an introduction from Dr. Sharpey to James Syme, Professor 
of Clinical Surgery in the University, on what was intended to be only a short 
visit. Asa matter of fact, however, this visit led to Lister’s settling in Edinburgh, 
where he remained until he received a call to occupy the chair of surgery in the 
University of Glasgow. Lister appears at once to have conceived a great admira- 
tion for Syme, then at the zenith of his great powers as a clinical teacher. He 
respected not only Syme’s skill and resource as an operator, but also the strength 
of his intellect and the soundness of his judgement. Syme formed a just estimate 
of the powers of his visitor, for on a vacancy unexpectedly occurring he appointed 
Lister his House Surgeon in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. This association 
resulted in a warm personal friendship, which was cemented by Lister’s marriage 
a few years later with Syme’s eldest daughter, a lady who to the end of her life 
was indeed her husband’s helpmeet in all his scientific investigations. 
Lister became successively Lecturer in Surgery in the Extra-Mural School, 
and Assistant Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, and held these appointments 
at the time of his translation to Glasgow. The work which Lister did during this 
period of his life, and the direction of his thoughts, cannot be better indicated 
than by a glance at the writings he then published. The earliest papers were 
on the duration of vitality in the tissues, on the structure of involuntary muscular 
fibre, and on the cutaneous pigmentary system of the frog. Another group of 
papers dealt with the early stages of inflammation, with gangrene from arteritis, 
and with the coagulation of the blood both within and without the blood-vessels, 
while a third group was concerned with the nervous system and included obser- 
vations on the functions of the visceral nerves, with special reference to the 
inhibitory system, on the parts of the nervous system regulating the contraction 
of the arteries, and on the structure of nerve-fibre. It is not difficult to perceive 
the interrelation of these several lines of study and investigation, and the perusal 
of the papers in which they are embodied affords an interesting example of 
acute reasoning applied to the interpretation of the results of accurate observa- 
tion and experiment. 
The third distinct period of Lord Lister’s life was that during which he 
occupied the chair of Systematic Surgery in the University of Glasgow (1860 
to 1869). He there found himself in charge of a large number of beds 
in the old Royal Infirmary, to which, serving as it did the requirements 
of a great manufacturing city, accidental wounds of all sorts and degrees 
were daily admitted. From its wards, as he has related in the papers on the 
effects of the antiseptic system upon the salubrity of a general hospital here 
