11 



Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



and subsequently his House Surgeon, a post which he occupied for over a 

 year. He then decided to settle in Edinburgh, and in 1856 he was appointed 

 Assistant Surgeon at the Eoyal Infirmary ; at the same time he began to give 

 lectures on surgery in the Extramural school. In preparing these lectures 

 he found that the subject of inflammation and the changes which occurred in 

 the tissues were so imperfectly understood that he made it his first duty to 

 investigate the matter for himself. The results of these researches were pi 

 the greatest value in his subsequent work on the treatment of wounds, and 

 enabled him to understand and follow up many things which occurred in 

 wounds where sepsis was excluded, and to make deductions which were of 

 great importance in his work. His researches on these matters earned for 

 him the Fellowship of the Eoyal Society, to which he was elected at quite 

 an early age. His papers on the early stages of inflammation placed the whole 

 subject on a new and firm basis and remain as classics and remarkable 

 examples of close observation and accurate deduction. 



In 1860 the Chair of Surgery in Glasgow became vacant and Lister was 

 appointed to that position, and left Edinburgh to assume his duties as 

 Professor of Surgery. There he had also charge of wards in the infirmary, 

 and it so happened that the wards allotted to him were particularly insanitary, 

 and in fact all forms of septic diseases of wounds were constantly present in 

 them. Indeed, the terrible results which followed injuries and operations 

 were a cause of great distress to him, and he was constantly pondering over 

 their causation and prevention. At that time many surgeons looked on these 

 diseases as inevitable accompaniments of wounds, especially when treated in 

 hospitals, and believed that nothing in the way of local treatment was of any- 

 real value in preventing their occurrence. As a result, however, of his 

 reflections on septic diseases and of the scientific work which he had been 

 carrying out, Lister had already, when he took up his work in Glasgow, come 

 very near the solution of the matter. 



In his early lectures, in Glasgow, he devoted a great deal of time to the 

 subjects of inflammation and suppuration and their causes, indeed, to such an 

 extent that the students were inclined to think that too much attention was 

 paid to them, but Lister felt that it was the study of these matters which 

 would ultimately give the key to the cause of the troubles which occurred in 

 wounds and might lead to their prevention. He had already arrived at the 

 following conclusions : — Pus is only formed in wounds as the result of 

 irritation of the granulation tissue which covers the raw surface and the 

 formation of granulations must precede suppuration. The most probable cause 

 of this irritation of the granulation tissue is putrefaction of the discharges 

 in the wound. This putrefaction occurs quite early after the injury. The 

 cause of the putrefaction of the blood and serum is something which comes 

 from without and is not an essential occurrence after a wound, because in 

 subcutaneous injuries the tissues are cut or torn across in a similar manner 

 as in open wounds, blood is effused, serum is poured out and yet no 

 suppuration and no decomposition occur ; but once the skin is broken, the 



