SKETCH OF SIR JOSEPH LISTER. 697 



and takes for its watchword, ' asepsis without the use of antiseptics/ 

 Antisepsis has given place to asepsis, but the latter is just as surely 

 based on the ground first broken by Lister." The earlier results 

 that followed the application of Lister's methods are described as 

 having been simply astounding, and the feelings they inspired as like 

 those that follow " a mighty victory finally won after prolonged and 

 grievous defeats." In those hospitals where septicaemia had been 

 most certain, the best results were obtained, and wound fevers came 

 to be no longer dreaded. Equally good and certain results attend 

 the treatment carried out under aseptic precautions. Surgery now 

 hardly hesitates at anything, but fearlessly deals with every organ 

 of the human body. Operations that were approached with ex- 

 treme hesitation, or were put off till the last possible moment, or 

 were not ventured upon at all, are now undertaken fearlessly, and 

 with the certainty that no harm will come in them from putre- 

 faction. " It now celebrates its greatest triumph in dealing 

 with the skull and cranial cavity, with the brain, spinal column 

 and spinal canal, with the thoracic and abdominal viscera, with 

 bones and joints, with tendons and nerves; and patients are 

 not afraid to trust themselves with the surgeons in the most 

 delicate operations, and such as once would have been certainly 

 fatal. 



Lister's views were much controverted at first, and it was a long 

 time before they were generally accepted in England. Then, when 

 the application of the system had been modified in the light of addi- 

 tional study and experiment, and it became aseptic instead of anti- 

 septic, they said that he had shifted his ground. This was not so, 

 for the fundamental principle on which it has rested has all been 

 the same, and the differences in application are only of detail; and, 

 as we have already seen, he was almost from the beginning con- 

 sidering whether he could not dispense with the spraying, having 

 deduced the conclusion that it was not indispensable long before 

 he ventured to omit it. 



Professor Tillmanns claims that it was in Germany first, rather 

 than in England, that Lister's scientific works met with their earliest 

 recognition and general appreciation; tells how he, like other Ger- 

 man surgeons, sought out " the founder of modern surgery " in his 

 London hospital, and, " filled with gratitude," laid his homage at his 

 feet; and gleefully speaks of the ovation which the professors and 

 students offered him a few years ago at Leipsic. 



In 1869 Lister was appointed to the chair of clinical surgery in 

 the University of Edinburgh, where he succeeded Dr. Syme, his 

 father-in-law; where large and enthusiastic classes listened to his 

 lectures; whence the reputation of his clinic extended through the 



