PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 7 



first as House-Surgeon and afterwards as Assistant Surgeon 

 at the Royal Infirmary. The earliest papers of this period 

 were on the duration of vitality of tissues and on the 

 structure of the plain muscular fibre. Another group dealt 

 with the early stages of inflammation, with gangrene and 

 with the clotting of blood ; while a third group was con- 

 cerned with the functions of visceral nerves. 



In 1860 Lister was appointed Professor of Systematic 

 Surgery at Glasgow University. In the wards of the Royal 

 Infirmary he commenced his struggle with pyaemia, hospital 

 gangrene and suppuration. Taking advantage of the dis- 

 coveries of Pasteur, which revealed the cause of putrefac- 

 tive fermentation to be the development of living organisms 

 in the dust of the air, he applied the new idea to the treat- 

 ment of wounds. It is unnecessary to repeat the oft-told 

 tale of the evolution of modern surgery on the lines laid 

 down by Lister. It is enough to say that, taking Pasteur's 

 pregnant discovery as his guide, he studied for himself, with 

 characteristic thoroughness, the action of micro-organisms 

 in putrefactive fermentation inorganic fluids. Next, with 

 infinite trouble, he tried how the new principle could most 

 effectively be applied. To gain any notion of the patience 

 with which he worked his own papers must be read. It 

 will there be seen that he would pursue a research for a 

 score of years, ever seeking for sources of fallacy, for causes 

 of failure, and for the often elusive secret on which success 

 depended. How completely he succeeded is shewn by the 

 history of modern surgery. 



In 1869 he succeeded Syme in the Chair of Surgery at the 

 University of Edinburgh. There he continued his work, 

 devising and treating improvements in the methods of 

 carrying out the antiseptic principle. At the same time 

 he carried out researches on the germ theory of putrefaction 

 and on lactic fermentation. In 1877 he left Edinburgh 



