LISTER 8 DEBT TO HOME INFLUENCE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3381, 4 July 1927, Page 7

LISTER 8 DEBT TO HOME INFLUENCE.

The events in commemoration of the centenary of Lord Lister’s birth in London in April, says the “Daily Telegraph,” included a memorial service at Westminster Abbey, where medical savants from all parts of the world listened to a stimulating sermon by tho Bishop of Birminbam.

In his address the Bishop of Birmingham said that the steady persistence with which Lister pursued a single great aim throughout his career was remarkable. “Whence came his pertinacity, his steady trustworthiness ?” asked tho bishop.” He owed much to his Quaker ancestry. The great-grandfather whose name he bore was a Yorkshire Quaker of humble origin, who came to London and kept a tobacconist’s shop in Aidersgate street. His grandfather became a wine merchant in the city, and brought to prosperity a business which his father inherited. Quaker probity and Quaker enterprise in trade led, as in so many instances, to wealth. “Lister’s father was not only successful in business, he was also a man of conspicuous scientific ability. The ideals of his religious communion caused tho city merchant to shun the amusements in which others would spend their leisure. So he took up the study of optics, and made important discoveries, by which he deserves to be remembered, and for which he was elected to the Royal Society. Lister’s mother belonged, like her husband, to the Society of Friends. She had been, like her widowed mother, a teacher at a Quaker school in Yorkshire, and apparently had Irish blood in her veins. Perhaps it is not fanciful to see in the ability of Listei’s father, and in a touch of Celtic imagination derived from his mother, the source of his genius. On such a question of heredity we cannot speak with confidence. But no one would deny that Lister received in his home life, with its traditions of self-discipline and high endeavour, influences which made his character the worthy servant of his genius. ’I “When we think of such a discovery as that which we associate with the name of Lister we wonder, how many more such discoveries shall be made by humanity,” proceeded Dr Barnes. “Thanks to Lister, the surgeon and the physiologist can now work hand in hand. The early stages of disorder can be laid bare by the surgeon's knife, the origin of pathological changes can be investigated.' Shall we thus in the end discover how we may prevent tho onset of disease ? The question cannot be answered. But we need not hesitate to affirm that man’s future triumphs in the warfare against disease will surpass the victories already won. Sometimes when we speculate as to the future of humanity we think of the Highlyevolved forms of life that lorded the earth in past ages. They disappeared. Why ? Probably minute organisms swept them away. Either the virulence of such organisms increased or the animals attacked lost their power of resistance. Is such an end to be the fate of humanity ? 1 Many a zoologist would answer ‘Yes. And yet man differs from all other animals that have come.fi'om earth’s teeming womb. The theologian has justification in bolding that the characteristic developments and powers of the human mind set man apart; he has, in conventional language, a soul, some quality of personality, of survival value in the scheme of the universe. Is it possible that, by virtue of these same mental powers man will conquer disease and pain, and thus in the end prepare tho way for a Kingdom of God upon earth? Will medical and moral victories combine to make human life equal to human hopes and dreams? None can say. We build for an unknown future. Yet the achievements of the leaders of human progress give substance to our hopes.”