98 



Anniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



freely used even on the battlefield, has of course contributed to render 

 his name popular throughout Germany ; nay, to make it a household 

 word in many homes. We use the word " listern " as a verb to 

 designate the use of the carbol-spray while bandaging a wound. I do 

 not hesitate to proclaim Lister the greatest benefactor of mankind 

 since Jenner's wonderful discovery — far superior, indeed, to Jackson 

 and Simpson ; because, whatever may be the dread of pain and the 

 blessing of being spared it, in Lister's invention health and life itself 

 are concerned, as in hardly any other medical discovery except vacci- 

 nation. Moreover, the general ideas which have led to Professor 

 Lister's conception stamp his work with a peculiarly scientific 

 character.' " 



" In a letter dated from Vevey on the 10th of this month, Professor 

 Klehs, of Prague, himself a distinguished worker in this field, ex- 

 presses in the strongest terms his admiration of the profound philoso- 

 phical intuition and practical success of Mr. Lister, as having not only 

 reformed the whole art of Surgery, but given a new impulse to medical 

 science generally. Professor Klebs's interpretation of the opposition 

 encountered for a time by Mr. Lister is worthy of mention. He 

 ascribes it to the high standard attained by British Surgery before 

 the time of Lister. ' The operators,' he says, ' that work under the 

 best hygienic conditions will not feel so acutely as others do the 

 necessity of disinfecting wounds. But the good results of the former 

 British Surgery are now surpassed by the new method, which is 

 accepted at the present time by the whole world.' 



" Such testimonies might be multiplied to any extent. The fore- 

 going are the answers received from the only three gentlemen who 

 have been requested to express an opinion as to the merits of Mr. 

 Lister." 



A Royal Medal has been awarded to Captain Andrew Noble, late 

 R.A., P. U.S. Captain Noble is joint author with Professor Abel, 

 of the " Researches on Explosives," " Phil. Trans.," 1875, which, 

 in combination with other labours in the same field, procured for 

 Professor Abel the honour of the Royal Medal in 1879. To Professor 

 Abel is due mainly the chemical part of these investigations ; to 

 Captain Noble, the mechanical and mathematical part. Each is a 

 complement of the other, but it may be safely afiirmed that they could 

 not have been presented to the world in the form in which they appear 

 without the co-operation of Captain Noble's remarkable union of 

 technical knowledge and mastery of mathematical analysis with the 

 chemical science of Professor Abel. His beautiful invention of the 

 Chronoscope, an instrument constructed by him at great cost, by 

 which intervals of time as small as the one-millionth part of a 

 second can be measured, has been of indispensable value in these 



