564 
IA TOT, 
[APRIL 11, 1907 
will be required yearly to feed the circulation of the 
cold bottom water in the North Polar basin. 
This brief outline of the contents of this interesting 
memoir will give some idea of the thoroughness of 
its scientific methods and the great labour that has 
been bestowed upon them. 
THE COMMEMORATION OF LORD LISTER’S 
EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY. 
Op Bee. eightieth anniversary of the birthday of Lord 
uister occurred on Friday last, April 5. Many 
scientific men have had the good fortune iS ‘discover 
the causation of phenomena of immediate practical 
importance, but to few have been vouchsafed the 
privilege of seeing the results of their discoveries 
become in a few years of such enormous benefit to 
their fellow men as those of Joseph Lister. No man 
alive has by a single discovery conferred upon the 
whole of mankind a greater boon than did the 
surgeon who discovered the causation of the direful 
but not unusual sequelae of a surgical operation, viz. 
suppuration, septicamia, secondary hemorrhage, 
erysipelas, and hospital gangrene, and who showed 
that by preventing the access of bacteria to wounds 
all these diseases could be avoided. 
It is just forty years since the first papers of Lord 
Lister dealing with his discoveries were published in 
the Lancet. How the best skill of the surgeon was 
baffled by these wound infections and the whole 
development of surgery prevented may be realised by 
a quotation from a leading article in the Lancet 
written at the time of the publication of one of 
Lister’s earliest papers in 1867. 
The mortality of compound fractures, of amputations 
and operations and of lithotomy in our larger hospitals, 
both provincial and metropolitan, is something frightful. 
And the occurrence of death with symptoms of blood- 
poisoning is, unfortunately, not confined to cases of serious 
operation, but happens ever and anon in operations in 
themselves slight. The risk of blood-poisoning is indeed 
now the one great opprobrium of surgery. There is no 
limit to the operative feats of surgeons, but there is a 
miserable and serious risk in every case, especially in 
hospitals, of the occurrence of fatal after-consequences, 
against which—until now at least—we have had little or 
no power of resistance. 
The story of the discovery of antiseptic surgery 
was briefly told by Lord Lister himself in the third 
Huxley lecture delivered in 1900. In this lecture 
Lord Lister explained how by the time he became a 
house-surgeon at University College he was already 
endowed with a love of physiology and a first-rate 
microscope. The former he owed to the inspiration 
of Prof. Sharpey and the latter to his father, who 
did so much to raise the compound microscope from 
little better than a toy to the powerful engine for 
investigation which it then was. As a young surgeon 
his attention was immediately turned to the study of 
those scourges of surgery, suppuration, pyamia, and 
hospital gangrene. During the next ten years he 
made a number of investigations upon the early 
stages of inflammation and the healing of wounds. 
He was early led to the conclusion that suppuration 
and septic diseases were due to a poison acting locally, 
and again and again he searched with the aid of the 
microscope the discharges from wounds in the hope 
of discovering some materies morbi of an organised 
Ixind. 
The idea that wound infections were of parasitic 
origin, although the parasite escaped detection, was 
early in his mind, so that when the epoch-making 
discoveries of Pasteur on the nature of fermentation 
and putrefaction were published, Lister was prepared 
NO. 1954, VOL. 75] 
to appreciate the analogy between these phenomena 
and those of wound infection. Guided by this 
analogy, he devised methods to prevent the entrance 
of germs to wounds, and was immediately successful 
in obviating the evil effects hitherto so generally 
attendant upon the simplest operation. 
The actual methods employed have undergone some 
modifications and simplification in accordance with 
the development of knowledge during the last fifty 
years, but the principle to protect wounds from the 
access of germs ‘‘ by means which shall disturb the 
tissues as little as is consistent with the attainment 
of the essential object’ retains its full value at the 
present time. 
Lord Lister has been the recipient of many honours, 
bestowed upon him by every civilised community, but 
it was widely desired that his eightieth birthday 
should be suitably commemorated. It was considered 
by some of his admirers that this could best be done 
by the re-publication, by subscription, of his collected 
work in suitable form. Invitations were accordingly 
issued to a number of scientific and medical men, 
both at home and abroad, to form themselves into a 
committee for this purpose. The invitations have 
met with a warm response, and the committee may 
be described as an international one. 
A meeting of this committee took place on 
Thursday, April 4, at the Royal College of Surgeons, 
which was presided over by Mr. Henry Morris, the 
president of the college. It was unanimously resolved 
to ask Lord Lister to allow the committee to re- 
publish his scientific papers, and a small editorial 
committee was chosen to carry out this object. The 
following letter was sent to Lord Lister from the 
committee :— 
Dear Lorp Lister, 
A desire having been widely felt that the eightieth 
anniversary of your birthday should be marked in some 
special manner, a committee of your professional brethren 
both at home and abroad was formed to consider in what 
way this could best be done. 
This committee met to-day at the Royal College of 
Surgeons, when it was unanimously resolved to ask you 
to allow them to commemorate the occasion by collecting 
and publishing your various scientific papers in book form. 
In anticipation of your acquiescence, an editorial com- 
mittee was appointed to carry out such publication. 
At the same time, those present at the meeting wished 
to convey to you their warmest congratulations on this 
occasion, and gratefully to acknowledge the debt which the 
medical profession, and, indeed, the whole world, owe to 
you for the work which you have done. That you have 
lived to see such enormous advances in surgery and 
medicine flow from your work must be a source of great 
gratification to you, and the committee hope that you 
may be spared to see still many further advances follow 
therefrom. 
I remain, dear Lord Lister, 
: Yours sincerely, 
(Signed) Hy. Morris. 
President, Royal College of Surgeons, Chairman. 
Lord Lister replied to the letter as follows :— 
Drar Mr. Morais, 
I duly received your letter yesterday informing me-of 
the decision of the general committee to ask me to allow 
them to commemorate the occasion of my eightieth birth- 
day by collecting and publishing my various scientific 
papers in book form. 
This proposal is almost overwhelming in its kindness, 
and I expressed to the deputation which met here in the 
morning my profound sense of gratitude. This surpass- 
ingly generous offer is extremely gratifying to me. 
Believe me, 
Very sincerely yours, 
(Signed) LisTER. © 
