LISTER’S LIFE WORK.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 16155, 21 July 1924, Page 3

LISTER’S LIFE WORK.

(By Dr. C. W. Saleeby, F. 11. S. Edin.) A young surgeon named Joseph Lister, born in Essex, soil'of a father who was a superb amateur microsoopist was studying inflammation under the microscope in Glasgow. He was told of the work of a Frenchman, Louis ■ Pasteur, on fermentation, and applied [ that work to his problem. Surgical i inflammation is a kind of fermentation, ; due to microbes, and can be controlled, cured, prevented, by the use of such 1 agents as carbolic acid—the first eni- : ployed by Lister—which he called antiseptic's. His work gave him the Chair of Surgery in Edinburgh, and then, when • Scotland and Paris and Copenhagen ' were following his methods and London ; alone was recalcitrant, he came to j King’s College and established his 1 truth there. As long as man exists ' this man will be remembered with love ' and gratitude. The other day a fine bust of him was unveiled in Portiand-place. very close to his last residence in London. The money for his memorial was subscribed internationally. A grateful woman looks up into tbe benefactor s face —as another such looks up into the face ot i Louis Pasteur in the memorial, also inter-national in origin, and the greatest of all Frenchmen and all doctors, in Paris. t Some money was left over, and to bo permanently used for the advance of surgery. Also the immortal name is remombere in tbe title of tbe Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine at Chelsea, com paring not unfavourably with the wforld-famous Pastieur Institute tin Paris. In Glasgow there still exists tbe ward in which Lister first used carbolic "■> 1 in a series of cases of compound fra" titre, with results which had 'never been approached in tbe history of surgery in cases of that dangerous character. where a direct route for microbes is established from the outside to injured bones The ward is now to be demoli>h?d, and, indeed, tbe destroyer’s hands approach it e\ery day. Those who have worshipped there, as 1 have, as well as in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. ! where Lister finally triumphed, mint deplore the destruction of the historic ward in Glasgow. 1 But whether or not that ward is to be spared as one of the world s memorials to one of its greatest benefactors; 1 repent tbe suggestion made here when Lister died, that the best I memorials to champions ol life should themselves be living. We still lose far too many mothers in England when babies are born. The cause of death j is officially calk'd puerpaerl lever. It i is lack of Listerism, and is shameful | in our country whatever may be said of j it in South America or Crete or China, j v/ Better than the liust to Lister in j Portia nd-place and the statue to Flor- i enee Nightingale in Waterk(o-place | would he such service as gave to every j mother in our land, at her creative 1 hour, a doctor on one side ol her lied | and a nurse on the other incarnating Joseph Lister, and Florence Niglitin- | gale, for the safety of our race. j