PIONEER OF ANTISEPTIC SURGERY

Manawatu Times, Volume LII, Issue 3577, 7 April 1927, Page 7

PIONEER OF ANTISEPTIC SURGERY

CENTENARY TRIBUTE TO LATE LORD LISTER. , MONOPOLISING INTEREST IN LONDON. [By Electric Cable-Copyright] [Aust and N.Z. Cable Association.] (Received Wednesday, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, April 5. , The Lister Centenary is monopolising attention in medical and scientific societies in London. A delegation from all parts of the world ia paying tribute to the immense services the pioneer of antiseptic surgery has rendered to humanity. Mr. Baldwin, in tribute to tho British Medical Association, said that Lord Lister was a master workman, truthloving, truth-seeking, and truth-living. All the newspapers are publishing special editorials, articles by leading scientists, and pictures. Lord Joseph Lister was born at Upton, Essex, on April 5, 1827| and was most of his life engaged as a professor of surgery and lecturer at Edinburgh and Glasgow, and later at King’s College, London. In 1902 he was made a member of the Order of Merit. He died February 10, 1912. Few men have been privileged to confer such great benefits on suffering humanity as did Lord Lister by his discovery of antiseptic surgery. Before his day a serious operation meant almost certain death, because almost invariably putrefaction and blood-pois-oning occurred in the wound made by the surgeon’s knife. Lister made tho epoch-making discovery that these evils were the result of germs, and that by the use of carbolic acid the wound could be kept antiseptic and proof against the action of germs. But for the general use of antiseptics in surgery, which followed Lister’s discovery, most of the operations which are now common practice in our hospitals could not be attempted at all.