RONTGEN RAYS. 
205 
General MAURICE : Colonel Trench, ladies and gentlemen, there is 
one point in connection with what Mr. Webster has called the evolution 
of this method and system which his modesty and Mr. Moore’s has 
prevented them from bringing before you, and therefore as I happen to 
have had strong reason to know about it, I want to draw your attention 
to it. Some of you may not perhaps be aware that in the greatest 
scientific address of the year, that which sums up the entire scientific 
results of the year, the work which Mr. Webster and Mr. Moore did was 
taken by Sir Joseph Lister, the President of the British Association, as 
the most important work of the year. Unfortunately, from certain 
prejudices of Mr. Moore’s profession, which perhaps we see more easily 
from outside (and we may have them in our own) than perhaps they do 
from within, it happened that the report of the whole of these proceed¬ 
ings, from which Sir Joseph Lister took his account of that particular 
operation, was one which a very old friend of mine, who is also a most 
distinguished surgeon, Mr. Howard Marsh, had given as of a case of his 
own in the “ British Medical Journal,” and therefore it so happened 
that as he was simply dealing with it as a scientific case, the names of 
Mr. Webster and Mr. Moore were, according to professional etiquette, 
necessarily omitted. Sir Joseph Lister was therefore, as regards 
their share in the transaction, not altogether correct as to his facts. 
He attributed to Mr. Howard Marsh what he had not actually done. 
To Mr. Marsh I am personally indebted in so many ways for 
unlimited kindnesses, that 1 should be exceedingly sorry to deprive 
him of anything that is his due, but had he not been obliged by 
pressure of business to be absent, he would have been down here to¬ 
night and stated the facts himself. It so happened that Sir Joseph 
Lister attributed to Mr. Howard Marsh the practical dealing with the 
operation of the setting of the arm, whereas in fact Mr. Howard Marsh 
had nothing to say to it. His great service, on which everything turned, 
was in recommending the application of these rays. That application 
was only possible because of the previous work and experience of Mr. 
Moore and Mr. Webster. After the photograph had been taken by Mr. 
Webster, the thing was an absolute bagatelle. There is not a single 
person in this room who would not have out-faced the whole College of 
Surgeons if they had dared to tell him after the photograph that it was 
a fracture and not a dislocation ; the photograph spoke for itself, and so 
distinctly spoke for itself, that when, almost immediately afterwards, I 
took it up to Mr. Howard Marsh, he said, 44 My goodness, we shall have 
to mind our p’s and q’s after this, because if I were to try to humbug a 
jury after this about any operation, they would produce a photograph 
and say, 4 That is not a fracture, it is a dislocation.’ ” Within a very 
few minutes the operation was done, not by Mr. Howard Marsh, but by 
our own army surgeon, Captain Salvage, who put the patient under 
chloroform and put the arm immediately into its place. I was anxious 
to emphasize that point, because as a side issue I think that any hunting 
man or anybody else who meets with a serious accident, and allows any 
surgeon on this earth to touch his arm without having the Rontgen rays 
applied to it, is such a great fool that he ought to be ashamed of himself. 
But that incident, as Mr. Howard Marsh said to me then, was absolutely 
the first time, as Mr. Webster has told you, that the Rontgen rays had 
been applied to surgical diagnosis, and therefore it is to Mr. Webster 
and to Mr. Moore that we owe (and much as I am personally indebted 
to them, this is a much more important matter than that of any single 
