564 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVII. No. 1223 



The " Story of the Four Flasks," which be- 

 came, as Godlee well says, " classical," is 

 finally completely told. These were partly 

 filled with fresh -urine, boiled, their necks 

 drawn out to l/12th of an inch in diameter 

 and all left open to the air. The neck of one 

 was left vertical, those of the other three were 

 bent downward. The contents of the vertical 

 necked flask soon putrified. The other three 

 travelled with him from Glasgow to Edin- 

 burgh and thence to London, where they were 

 accidentally destroyed by fire ten years after 

 being prepared as described. During all these 

 ten years the urine remained clear and unde- 

 composed! If for ten years, why not unde- 

 eomposed for a century! 



The two chapters describing the reception 

 of Lister's antiseptic system by the profession 

 " at home " and " abroad " are most interest- 

 ing. After nine years in Glasgow, Lister 

 succeeded Syme in the chair of clinical sur- 

 gery in Edinburgh, where his success as a 

 teacher was as immediate as it had been in 

 Glasgow, where he had " taken the students 

 by storm." Here he created a school of en- 

 thusiastic pupils who in time won hospital 

 positions as didactic and clinical teachers and 

 practised antisepsis. 



In 187Y, at the age of fifty, he went to 

 London to King's College as the successor of 

 Sir William Fergusson, who had been easily 

 and for long the foremost surgeon of the 

 metropolis. But what a contrast! Wbat a 

 chilling frost ! Instead of over 180 as at Edin- 

 burgh, the number of new students annually 

 was less than 25 ! At his lectures the pres- 

 ent distinguished surgeon, Sir Watson Cheyne, 

 ■ — one of four assistants who had gone with 

 Lister from Edinburgh to London, as he had 

 stipulated — was careful to attend, so that at 

 least there might be a dozen auditors ! " We 

 four unhappy men . . . wandered about . . . 

 the wards in other hospitals where the air was 

 heavy with the odor of suppuration . . . and 

 the flushed cheek spoke eloquently of surgical 

 fever." In Edinburgh Lister had had " half 

 a dozen wards with 60 or TO patients " whereas 

 at King's he had "only two wards . . . but 

 only empty teds " 1 The extraordinary domi- 



neering conduct of the nurses at King's will 

 seem very strange to American surgeons and 

 nurses. 



In the London medical societies discussions 

 on antisepsis were either listless or else hostile. 

 Most of the surgeons did not really grasp the 

 fmidamentals of the system. Even Paget 

 dressed a compound fracture of the leg by put- 

 ting on collodion at once and then 12 hours 

 later applied carbolic acid! Tet he declared 

 that the treatment " did no good " though he 

 had taken " special care " to follow Lister's 

 method! Mr. Savory, one of the leaders and 

 surgeon to " Bart's " itself, in 1879 considered 

 that an annual average of about 6 cases of 

 pyemia, 20 of erysipelas and 26 of blood 

 poisoning represented as good a result as it 

 was reasonably possible to expect! 



In 1876 in connection with the Centennial 

 in Philadelphia, we held an International 

 Surgical Congress. There I saw, heard and 

 met Lister for the first time. The general 

 tone of the discussion in the surgical section 

 of which Lister was chairman, with the ex- 

 ception of a few, was that the system was 

 little if anything more than " surgical cleanli- 

 ness " ! I was an attentive listener, was 

 wholly converted to Lister's views and began 

 to practise his method when I went on duty at 

 St. Mary's Hospital, October 1, 1876, and have 

 never for a moment ceased to be an enthusi- 

 astic disciple. My results were marvellously 

 difl^erent from what they had been in the same 

 hospital " for ten years. " Experientia docet." 

 I hnow whereof I si)eak by bitter prior ex- 

 perience. 



On the Continent, Saxtorph, Thiersch, Volk- 

 mann, ISTussbaum, Championniere and others 

 very early accepted the method and improved 

 it. Then it came back re-vamped as it were 

 to London, and finally, has won its way in a 

 triumphant progress all over the civilized 

 world. 



Honors had begun to come thick and fast. 

 The presidency of the Eoyal Society, degrees 

 and honorary memberships from everywhere, 

 a baronetcy and finally the peerage and the 

 Order of Merit, limited to 24, and Lister was 

 one of the first 12. 



