170 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



10 per cent. ; most of them having fallen to 5 per cent., 2 

 per cent., I per cent., and even small fractions of I per 

 cent. 



The story of Lister's work as recorded in his successive 

 papers 1 is one of the most fascinating in all surgery. His 

 earliest studies, from 1853 to 1863, were in physiology 

 and pathology. Next he took up his researches on putre- 

 faction (or as we should now say infection and suppura- 

 tion) which led to his devising the antiseptic system. He 

 was influenced to make these observations and experi- 

 ments, which he applied with such signal success to surgi- 

 cal problems, by Pasteur's earlier researches. He always 

 cheerfully acknowledged his debt to the eminent French- 

 man. When a student in Paris in 1865 I knew Pouchet 

 fils and was an interested spectator in the fight between 

 Pasteur and Pouchet's father as to spontaneous genera- 

 tion. Lemaire's book on "Acide Phenique" (carbolic 

 acid) was published in that same year. 



Bacteriology did not exist as a science, but Pasteur, 

 Lister and a few of the elect in the upper realms of 

 imagination saw the "germs" or "microbes" and firmly 

 believed them to be the cause of infection. In 1900, at 

 the age of seventy-three, Lister restated his earlier work 2 

 and illuminated it by many observations, experiments and 

 drawings made in these early years, but first published 

 fifty years after they were made. 



If you wish to know the man, his fertility in devising 

 new and convincing experiments, and his mental acumen 

 in interpreting them "read, mark, learn and inwardly di- 

 gest" that paper and use it as a model. 



Pare in his na'ive way tells us that he sought various 

 applications which might "mitigate the pains [of his pa- 

 tients] and happily" mark the word "happily"- -"bring 

 them to suppuration." That is the "laudable pus" of the 

 pre-Listerian days. Lister, on the contrary, believing that 



1 Lister's Collected Papers, 2 vols., Oxford, 1909. 



2 Brit. Med. Jour., 1900, II., 969. 



