Life of Lord Lister

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume XII, Issue 1, 1 January 1919, Page 31

Life of Lord Lister

When individuals are born into certain world-wide or national conditions, they are apt to think those conditions are, were, and always shall be ; and those closely allied to any established form or custom, are invariably offended or enraged at being shaken out of their old beliefs and habits, which, however imperfect, familiarity has led them to believe are as eternally correct as the heavenly bodies. The history of the world's progress is punctuated every now and then by the life and work of some great soul. Robert Browning says : — ' Only here and there a star dispels The darkness, here and there a towering mind O'erlooks its prostrate fellows." We call this towering mind a genius, and often it is his lot to bear the derision, hatred, and persecution of those who see their life-long theories and customs in danger of being laid waste. So the road of an innovator is often thorny, stoney, lonely, and thankless ; only a selfless being, in search of a truth he knew would enrich humanity, could keep on his course undaunted. Such a man was Lord Lister, the founder of modern surgery.

The cause of disease has always exercised man's mind. The Babylonians believed sickness to be related to the course of heavenly bodies and to demons. The Greeks got a little farther and said every disease had it own particular mode of production from natural causes.

Galen, a Roman born 130 A.D., gave to the world most valuable works on anatomy and physiology, and his teaching ruled within the last 400 years. Galen was followed by Christianity with its exclusive regard to the spiritual side of life. Then followed the dark ages of 1,000 years, with its burial of m ed ical k no wledge . After the Reformation daylight began to dawn again, and men turned their attention again to the healing of the body. Van Helmont, born 1577, a Belgian chemist, who by research gave much to the world, employed himself greatly with the philosophy of disease. So impotent did he feel before this unaccountable devastating monster, that after finishing his review of medicine

he uttered this prayer : " Oh, merciful God, how long wilt Thou be angry with man that Thou hast not revealed one truth to Thy students of healing ? Is this moloch sacrifice pleasing to Thee, and wilt Thou that the lives of the poor, of widows, and of children be continually offered up to Thee in miserable torments of incurable diseases, or through the carelessness and ignorance of physicians ? ' If he had had the seer's vision he would have beheld in the far future a man of gentle compassion whose consummate genius enabled him to master to a great extent this terrible problem, and become, therefore, a benefactor to mankind to such a degree that men to the end of time must rise up and call him blessed. This man was our hero and genius, Lord Lister.

Lord Lister was born in 1827 at West Ham, a suburb of London, which was then situated among green pastures. He was of English extraction and his parents were Quakers. Quakers were always clannish, so we find a small community of them at West Ham. Their simple mode of living and high integrity caused them to make a success of life, and many of them were people of influence and wealth. Such a one was Joseph Lister's father. Young Joseph lived his boyhood's life with six brothers and sisters in a commodious house and spacious garden. Joseph was the second son. The family was brought up in a high moral atmosphere, where living was not at variance with profession. In friendship's world, which consisted almost entirely of Quakers, the same atmosphere prevailed. Most people have to learn wisdom through pains of body and soul, and some never learn, but Joseph Lister seemed to be born with a Divine touch upon him. From earliest childhood till old age, there reigned in his breast the qualities of the true gentleman. He was a serious boy, but affectionate and merry, and these characteristics he never lost. The intellectual atmosphere, too, of Lister's home was of a high order. His father was intensely interested in optics, and pursued his studies until his discourses enabled him to make the first perfect English achromatic microscope. When a small boy he was short-sighted, and used to put his eye to

a biibble which had been imprisoned in the glass of his nursery window. This bubble acted as a lens and facilitated his eyesight. On this childish disco very was built the man's achievement.

Joseph Lister was educated at a Quaker school, which emphasised the moral teaching of his home ; here he showed thoroughness rather than brilliance, became a good linguist, and later, when abroad, could lecture in French and German. At this time, too, he became familiar with the use of the microscope. Later he did well at college, but not brilliantly. Influenced by his father's scientific mind, he decided to study medicine. Prior to this time medical education was in a deplorable way. There was no proper training or standard attempted. Fundamental subjects might or might not be taught. The training was of short duration and haphazard. Anatomy and physiology were not known, and the Government and the public refused help in the matter. Dead bodies were secretly dug up and sold to the anatomists. Those who have read Dickens' ' Tale of Two Cities/' will remember Jerry Cruncher's exploits in this matter.

Home strong men, seeking to raise the medical standard, found their efforts at last rewarded in the establishment of the London University College and Medical School, and a good system of education planted, which became later the standard of all medical schools. It was this school Joseph had the fortune to enter, and here his powers first shone forth, and where he was awarded several gold medals.

The teachers and students of the University held Lister in great esteem, the latter electing him secretary, and afterwards president, of their society. At this time he is described as of average height, slender, but of an excellently proportioned and grace* ful build, having a lofty brow and earnest face. He dressed in the peculiarly cut coat denoting that he was a Quaker. With those he knew and loved he was gay and lighthearted. His gaiety was innate, and did not depend on companionship. Certain friendships went to influence his life at this time. One of them, Professor Lindley, the botanist, gave him his love of flowers. On excursions he gathered, then pressed and preserved them, not so much because he was an enthusiastic botanist

as that he loved their beauty. They became to him a soothing influence after the horrors of the hospital. Another friend was William Sharpey, who travelled on foot for years, visiting all the chief European hospitals, gathering medical knowledge, which he brought to England, where he was made professor. His work and lectures revolutionised physiology and helped to make it the great science it is to-day. Lister became this man's favourite pupil, and under his guidance began research work. Lister became house surgeon in the medical school he was trained in, and in that capacity came into contact with the appalling forms of blood poisoning and hospital gangrene.

The then treatment for gangrene was to burn the mortified parts away with caustics. Sometimes this treatment was successful, and sometimes the mortification would commence afresh. Up to that time the cause of putrefaction and suppuration was supposed to be caused by the oxygen in the air, which set up fermentations in the juices of the wounded tissues. The keen brain of Lister saw that if caustics burnt away the disease, then it must act on something local, as burning a wound could not act on the oxygen of the air. There was apparently something in the wound that was destroyed, and it was that so-mething which was the cause of the disease. He carefully examined pieces of diseased tissue through the microscope and made minute and careful observations and drawings of what he found there. The possibility of disease being caused by minute living or ganisms was present in his mind even at this time, but that truth was still a hidden one, so for the time being Lister could get no further.

When his term finished at London Hospital, Sharpey, aware of his pupil's wonderful powers, sent him to James Syme, of Edinburgh Infirmary, who was one of the most remarkable surgeons of his time. Lister had no intention of staying in Edinburgh, but an invisible hand drew the two great men together, and it was arranged that the young London doctor should become Syme's house surgeon in Edinburgh Infirmary. The opportunity was an incalculable benefit to Lister. During his lifetime there was no wastage put forth in the wrong direction ; his course seemed to be

mapped out by an all-wise mind, and he pursued it, but, as Pasteur once said, "' Chance only favours the mind that is prepared for it."

The hospitality of Syme's house was thrown open to him, and Lister fell in love with, and married, his daughter Agnes. From that time he severed his connection with the Quakers as a sect, and joined the Church of England. His marriage was a supremely happy one, and said to be a lifelong honeymoon. His home life must have been a great balm for all his disappointments and sufferings. With strangers he was always nervous and shy, but in the warmth of his own home reserve melted, and his joyous happy nature ripened. Unfortunately Lister had no children. The world of society saw little of him or his wife. Lord Lister divided his time between the pleasures of home and his work in the world, in both of which spheres his wife was an able help-mate. Many of his notes taken down in her close handwriting bear testimony to frequent hours of mutual work. In Edinburgh, Lister began again his research work. In this pursuit focd was

often forgotten, and many of his microscopic observations were dated far after midnight. Earnest students, fired by his enthusiasm, were terribly taxed to keep up with him . The course and cause of inflammation occupied his attention, and at last his microscope yielded up to him the secrets he sought, and in our text books we have the lucid explanation of inflammation he gave to the world. He was next led on to the study of what he called " vitality " ; that invisible something that made men strong to resist disease and the want of it made them weak and prone to it. It is too long and too much for me to go into all his experiments and discoveries at this time. They extended over years and meant a sustained labour that only a genius could give. Suffice it to say that he found that the clotting of the blood in inflammation, which precedes suppuration, was due to loss of vitality of the inner cells of the blood vessels, which brought about loss of function or paralysis of the tissues ; that this loss of vitality might be caused by an irritant or injury to the tissues.

In 1860, when Lister was thirty-three years of age, he was appointed professor ■of surgery to Glasgow Infirmary. Hospitals

in Lister's time were hot-beds of disease. Especially was this the case when a hospital was in the centre of an industrial city like Glasgow, where slums gave forth a weakened humanity. The wards have been described as scenes of agony and repulsive horror, and their atmosphere as reeking with a sickening foetid odour. Gangrene, putrefaction, tetanus, erysipelas, septecaemia, and pyaemia found an abiding home there. Infection was rife, and by the crowding together of patients, the poison became co nc entrated and deadly . Few who had wounds survived, and those who did went out enfeebled for life. The description of gangrene is too horrible for words. It is so foul, agonising, relentless, and rapid. The w r ards of Glasgow often rang with cries of agony. The slightest prick in this dread atmosphere made a possible avenue for this frightfiil enemy of man, which could turn beautiful women and children and noble manhood into foul, but living putridity, causing them to fcecome an agony to themselves and a loathing and danger to others. At a hospital at Munich eighty per cent. died of this pestilence. It stopped the surgeon's knife except when it meant the only chance of life. Even the discovery of chloroform defeated at first its own good," because surgeons became more daring when painlessness could be ensured and entered numbers more on the death roll. Patients nursed at home had a greater chance of life. The gutter, even, was said to be a better place for an open wound than the infected air of a hospital.

The main object of the Glasgow authoritieswas to keep down expenses, and to them dirt was a harmless detail. Surgeons and friends submitted stoically to the apparently inevitable, but not so Lister. His spirit, beat itself against the walls of the cage of helplessness, while he sought with a consuming intensity for a Avay of escape. 6 Why," he said to his students; " when the skin is broken, should these impurities arise ? The man who is able to explain this problem will gain for himself undying fame."

Small attention was paid at this time to cleanliness. Before an operation the surgeon turned up his sleeves to save his coat: There was no washing of hands, for they would soon be stained. To clean the operating area was farcical for the same-

reason. Ligatures were hung on the surgeon's coat button, and the knife often rested between his lips. Instruments were habitually kept in coat and vest pockets and only wiped with a rag as the doctor or dresser moved from patient to patient. Lister demanded cleanliness ; hands had to be washed between the handling of every patient. Clean towels, dressings, and instruments were insisted on. Condy's fluid was lavishly used. All these efforts had a marked effect. In his lectures to the students, he told them wounds did not naturally pour out pus ; something irritated them and caused the juices in the wound to decompose and pour out pus ; that that something was probably in the air and betrayed its presence in the foetid smell. He was soon to find the key to the way of escape. Pasteur, as you know, was a French scientist, who, after long, careful study and experiments, proved to the world that putrefaction was due to micro-organisms in the air ; that those micro-organisms, if subjected to a certain heat, could be killed, and that they could not generate of themselves. He proved that as long as any substance capable of putrefaction was made sterile and then hermetically sealed from the micro-organisms in the air, so long would it remain absolutely pure. Hundreds of surgeons heard of this discovery sooner or later, only one heard the message it gave.

What Lister had long discovered regarding the paralysis of the tissues prior to suppuration, now linked itself with Pasteur \s discovery, and he saw that these paralysed tissues might well be subject to the microbes, as if they were actually dead. Like a lonely general. Lister found himself faced with infinite multi-millions of the deadliest enemies of mankind. There is no record of any statement coming from him at this time, but he quietly planned his tactics. The plan he formed was to kill any microbes that had got into the tissues through accident or operation, and then to keep any more from getting into the wound. For his destructive agent he chose the best antiseptic he knew, carbolic,. It was not the clear lotion we have to-day, but a dark tarry fluid, and we owe its improvement to Lister. His mode was to wash the injured tissues with 1-20 carbolic and lay a

piece of lint soaked in the same lotion on the wound, covered with a piece of oiled paper.

His efforts were first directed to compound fractures, very few of which formerly escaped gangrene or blood poisoning. His treatment was a success. Instead of these patients showing all the hideous signs he was used to. and dying or becoming cripples, they rose up able-bodied men. We read that Lister's comment on his success was calm and unrestrained, but we can imagine what a world of intense anticipation and feeling there was hidden behind that calm exterior. He found he could use carbolic freely in the depths of a wound, and that it destroyed germs. Chronic abscesses, which we know now are caused by the tubercle bacillus, next took Lister's attention. Before Lister's time, if one of these abscesses burst it was fatal ; a high fever set in and the patient died. Now we know they can be opened and the patient restored to years of comparative ease, and sometimes to complete health. This fact is due to Lister. In reporting his great feat there is no self -laudation ; he simply states, " The element of incurability has been eliminated."

As industrialism increased, hospitals became more crowded and the virulence of the microbe became greater. Statistics proved that cases of operation or accident, nursed in small country hospitals or in private houses, were far less fatal than when nursed in large hospitals. Sir James Simpson, of chloroform fame, compiled these statistics, and was so roused by the truth they told that he rose up in mighty denunciation of large hospitals. Had he been allowed he would have swept away all big hospitals and established a system of huts that could be demolished every few years. Lister in the meantime was quietly working out a remedy, by establishing an antiseptic operating system, on which that of the present day system is based, although, according to the author of Lister's life, the present-day surgical asepsis has lost the simplicity of Listerism, and built up for itself a vast work of unnecessary complications, by which Listerism has lost much and gained nothing. Of this weareno judges. The author says, '" From first to last Lister worked in olcl-fashioned hospitals, and it was in them as they were unchanged that he secured his incomparable results ; year

after year went by and never a wound under his charge went wrong."

Ligatures next took up Lister's attention. The silk ligature was not absorbable and caused much suppuration. With his indefatigable spirit, Lister set out to find an antiseptic ligature capable of being absorbed by the tissues. Seeking an animal substance, he experimented with cat-gut. He found when he soaked it in carbolic it softened and snapped, also the juices of the tissues rendered it unreliable as a ligature. Lister visited the factories where it was prepared and mastered the whole process. No practical detail escaped him concerning it from the time the gut left the sheep till it became absorbed by living tissue. By his knowledge of chemistry, he tested it in every conceivable wa}'. For twelve years Lister laboured at this work, and the victory achieved was the chromic gut surgery uses to-day.

In Glasgow, Lister's wards never developed the horrible conditions which sometimes showed themselves in other parts of the hospital. 80 bad did things become in wards separated from his only by ten feet of passage, that the flooring was taken up and investigation made. They found two inches down from the flooring, a multitude of coffins which had been placed there in the cholera epidemic of 1849. Also a few yards from the surgical windows and adjoining the patients' airing ground, was a church yard where was discovered a system of pit-burials of paupers ; here coffins were piled one on top of the other in pits, which, when uncovered, emitted a most foul odour. In the midst of these impossible conditions, Lister had in his wards no case of pyaemia, erysipelas, or hospital gangrene.

Although for nine years Glasgow medical men had had a genius in their midst, they let him slip indifferently through their fingers.

In 1869 Lister was appointed professor of clinical surgery in Edinburgh Infirmary. Here he must have found himself in a keener and warmer atmosphere. The leading man was still James Syme, his father-in-law, who was recognised as one of Britain's greatest surgeons. Also as a medical school Edinburgh excelled all other medical schools in the United Kingdom. Wherever Lister ruled the whole aspect of the wards

changed. Comparative peace and cheerfulness replaced the heart-rending cries, and looks of agony ; pure air the sickening foetid atmosphere. This soon was the case in his wards at Edinburgh. His scientific spirit and strong personality attracted large numbers of students ; his lecture room was rushed for seats, and no one thought of absenting himself. Hundreds flocked to him from all parts of Britain, and he was full of devices for their good and tuition. One student writes : kt Often in the middle of a trying operation, when we were trying to do our best, a gentle smile bestowed on us young students was mott encouraging." Many of these students afterwards confessed that their contact with Lister was the best and purest influence of their lives.

Lister had not yet hit upon a satisfactory dressing for a wound. He noticed that when an animal was wounded, a scab formed and protected the wound, and that if discharge had to come out it found a way out from under the edge of the scab. In civilised man, and especially in men in hospitals, this natural scab rarely formed owing to the failure of the blood and tissues to resist the germs, thereby becoming putrid. Lister set out to find an artificial scab for man, modelled from nature. It had to be a complete antiseptic shield for the wound and impermeable to liquid or dirt. It had to be flexible, so that movement of the part involved would not crack it. It had t » allow any discharge to ooze out from under its edge. With his undaunted energy he worked with all the known substances and liquids so that by some means he might contrive this artificial scab for man. After long series of experiments spread over many years, he produced the bland double cyanide of mercury and zinc gauze.

Pasteur had demonstrated how cottonwool became a filter for dirt and microbes by entangling them in its meshes. After trying many things, Lister was led to it, and thus obtained his end. The completed dressing was a double layer of cyanide gauze wrung out of a disinfectant, over it was placed a few layers of dry gauze, and overlapping the whole a mass of cotton woolIt was antiseptic, protective, flexible, volatile, impermeable to dust zind microbes, and allowed escape of discharge. Thus Lister contrived a perfect artificial scab,

and the one that is in use to-day. Little the nurse thinks when she applies the dressing, of the why and wherefore, and little she knows of the infinite labour, thought and time one man gave of his life before he devised this great work of simplicity and perfection.

Lister, too, was the first one to use India rubber tubing as a means of drainage, and it is interesting to note that the Queen of England was the first patient he experimented on. She had an abscess under her arm, and Lister was called. He lanced it, putting in a piece of carbolic lint for drainage. The pus did not come freely, and the Queen w r as still feverish and in pain. Lister was disturbed, and took a lonely walk to meditate, Then it occurred to him that a piece of India rubber tubing might form a good path of exit for the discharge. He soaked a piece in carbolic all night, and its present use answers for its success.

Lister had now wrought out an established system, it was this : " Certain germs under present conditions caused certain diseases if they got access to injured tissues. Certain chemicals, amongst which the best was carbolic, if applied to these germs killed, or at least so altered them that they could not cause disease. The object at which to aim was never to allow any germs to get to the injured tissues, whether conveyed by the air, the surgeon's or dresser's fingers, the instruments, the dressings, or from the patient's skin in the neighbourhood of the wound, without its first having been soaked in carbolic or rendered innocuous. If, however, it did reach the wound, then the would itself was to be soaked with a solution of carbolic or other chemical having similar powers. Then when once the wound was free from germs, it was covered with a protective antiseptic dressing of carbolic so that no germs could get to the wound without passing through this screen and becoming carbolised in transit."

One would have thought that the medical fraternity of his own nation would have been the first to accept his teaching, and pour out upon him their gratitude and admiration. Their hospitals had been called death-traps and slaughter-houses. One surgeon in its midst and in revolt at it, said *'Surgery is baulked and baffled and hospitals for patients, doctors, and nurses, are places

of living torment, which resound with theories of agony and where the air is polluted with the exhalations of rotting flesh." Lister as we have seen, grappled with the enemy and won. The bed-rock truth of statistics showed them an almost miraculous drop in the death rate of Lister's patients. Some of the doctors with their own eyes saw the transformation of his wards, or hear-say brought it to their ears ; but no, their motto was: 'What was, and is, always shall be," and most valiant were they in adhering to it.

Reformation necessarily implies that something was wrong, and it is this stigma that rouses the wrath of those responsible for this implied wrong. It takes a great man to place his judgment above his personal feelings, and great men are few. Lister's proved success was like a bomb of condemnation flung into the medical world. The resultant stir was great. Itsmembers hurled back missiles of ridicule, contempt, derision, and anger. In many cases jealousy gave these missiles a good, send-off. Indignation swept through the camp that their time-honoured customs and beliefs should be tampered with. Who was Lister that he should dictate to them ? Their vanity was stung by his proclamation of success, which success demonstrated to the world their failure. When his opposers were at last faced with the undeniable evidence all round of his success, they tried to take from his work the merit of originality. To this he gave little heed ; he cared only to press home the value of antiseptics. The press poured forth vollies, but he rarely retaliated, and then only for some truth's sake. When he did so he was terse and dignified, and his replies were always absolutely devoid of any personal element. Fortunately some heard his message and acted on it, a few men in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.

Lister kept open house for any seeking knowledge at his hands. We are told that foreign doctors came over the seas to him, spent days and nights imbibing his teaching and went home to their hospitals to revolutionise the work there, and so did their work tell that Listerism, as antisepsis began to be called, was hailed with delight by doctors and the public. When he visited Europe he was accorded such honours as commonly only fell to royalty. Eng-

land in the meantime was true to the maxim, v " A prophet hath no honour in his own country." She Mas steeped in what the author of Lister's life calls, kt Her invincible ignorance." We read that few of Lister's own medical countrymen frequented his house. .

Many doctors scorned Lister's system, yet openly declared they had never made use of it, thereby forfeiting their right to criticise it ; while others, acting on the principle that you cannot get too much of a good thing, filled up kettles of carbolic and poured it into the wounds like a cataract. Some professed to follow a modified Listerism, showing that they were ignorant of its first principles. Naturally, failure attended all who did not get down to bedrock of the why and wherefore of Lister's system. All this must have been very trying to him who had sought for the truth through years of toil, with an infinite patience far beyond the capacity of the ordinary man. No wonder he was goaded on to say : "It seems to be a difficult thing for me to' write the English language so as to make my meaning intelligible."

Lister's message had wrung forth before the Crimean War, and yet we read that the hospitals destroyed the army faster than the Home authorities could recruit it. They were nests of pestilence, houses of unspeakable horror. The wounded crowded into hospitals or buildings, and death passed through in hideous form, and at each refilling carried away in his grizzly grasp ninety per cent., leaving the other ten per cent, crippled for life. At the outbreak of the war Lister published a pamphlet giving a simple means of antiseptic treatment, applicable to wounded soldiers, but the authorities preferred their own way, such as it was.

In 1877 Lister was invited to the professor ship of surgery at King's College Hospital, London. Up to this time London surgeons almost en masse remained absolutely and bitterly opposed to Listerism, deliberately blinding themselves to the incalculable benefits they were thereby withholding from the public. But that public had heard rumours of better things, and had a voice, and had to be reckoned with. To appease it, and by way of an experiment, Lister was given a grudging invitation. All his personal inclinations prompted him

to refuse it. It was one of London's smallest hospitals, and Edinburgh by its world-wide fame gave Lister the largest student-field he could obtain. A petition was signed by 700 students begging him not to leave Edinburgh, and expressing to him their appreciation of his magnificent qualities asa surgeon and teacher. But Lister felt that nothing but his personal influence could overcome the obstinate opposition of the medical faculty there, and clear the way for his purifying and life-giving treatment. Needless to say, he went, but with the stipulation that he was to be allowed opportunities for teaching clinical surgery, was to have separate wards, and was to be allowed to bring his trained housesurgeons, dressers, and nurses with him. This was grudgingly granted . The little company went into a very unsympathetic atmosphere, but as Lister's system vvaa based on the laws of nature, success was its close attendant as surely as fire produces warmth. He cut into and wired a fractured patella, a thing never done before. Surgeons were aghast, but the man lived and walked as before. Other operations followed with success, and Lister soon had a following of the larger-minded among the doctors who were willing to learn. Brain, chest, and abdominal operations were performed now for the first time. Deformities in bones were set right or improved, and new life began to stir in the medical profession in England.

Even now Lister was subjected to bitter attacks of criticism, but finally in 1879 opposition surrendered absolutely and Lister,. unlike many a genius and reformer, lived to see a world acknowledge his work. The author caustically remarks that " England and America can divide between them the distinction of being the last to acknowledge it."

The tide had turned, and honours poured in. The first we are glad to read, came from Queen Victoria, and made him a peer. Universities and academies showered degrees ; muncipalities bestowed privileges on him. He visited the different countries on the Continent, and these visits are described as regal. Not only the medical profession rose to do him hon ur, but the whole populace. Students gathered at home and. abroad to signify their appreciation in their own orthodox style.

Many can stand adversity and opposition, but few world-wide honour and laudation. How do we find Lister ? When at an international congress at Amsterdam he came forward to speak, at his name the whole assembly rose to its feet and the cry of " Lister " was accompanied with vociferous, almost passionate cheering and waving of hats and handkerchiefs for many minutes. In 1890 at another medical congress on the Continent, 7,000 people were present. As each distinguished man arose, applause greeted him ; then Lister rose. The enthusiasm of that mighty assembly came on like a tidal wave. There was thunderous applause of welcome as his name rang out again and again through the great hall. Is it bathes to read that Lister, surprised and a little timid, stood before the assembly bowing his acknowledgments ? No, therein lay the greatest sign of his greatness.

Although Pasteur had such a notable place in Lister's life and work, it was years before they met. At Pasteur's jubilee, held with great ceremony at Paris in 1892, Lister, among other celebrities, rose to do honour to Pasteur. He assured him his researches had thrown a powerful light on, and completely revolutionised, surgery ; done away with its terrors and made its beneficent powers almost limitless. Pasteur, overwhelmed with emotion, seized Lister by the hand, led him to the platform, and there embraced him amid the thunde ous applause and tense emotion of all present.

In 1893 Lady Lister died. To Lord Lister this was an irreparable loss. Her great gifts of heart and brain had enabled her to be not only his revered wife, but his sympathetic friend and helper in his scientific work. A genius is always a peculiarly lonely man, and at this loss a great desolation must have fallen on Lord Lister's life.

In 1903, Lister had a serious illness, and through the subsequent years gradually lost his bodily powers and became a wornout old man. One quality that never waned was his benevolence and gentleness of heart. During these sad years he lived in retirement with his sister-in-law,, who, though an invalid, did her utmost to fill her dead sister's place.

Lister died on February 10th, 1912, and not till thirty hours after the event did London hear of it. Britain would fain have buried him among her great sons in Westminster Abbey, but reverently carried out his wish that he might be laid beside his w ; fe. A national memorial service was held in the Abbey ; the King and Queen attended, and every nation was represented by its ambassador or minister ; every scientific body at home and abroad sent its representative.

lii Hampstead Cemetery a plain grey granite slab bears the inscription : * Joseph, Baron Lister, born sth April, 1827 ; died 10th February, 1912." We feel sure Lister would himself have approved of that plain, terse statement. Greatness needs no emblazoned epitaph, for it lives enshrined forever in the work it has performed. In Edinburgh, Lister was fondly known by the students as ' k The Chief." One who came under his influence at this time writes of him thus : — * His brow spreads large and placid, and his eye Is deep and bright with steady looks that still Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfil. His face at once benign and proud and shy, If envy scout, if ignorance deny His faultless patience, his unyielding will, Beautiful gentleness, and splendid skill, Innumerable gratitudes reply. His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties, And seems in all his patients to compel, Such love and faith as failure cannot quell. We hold him for another Heracles, Battling with custom, prejudice, disease. At once the son of Zeus with Death and Hell." Such a one must Browning have had in his mind when he wrote : — c Strive and hold cheap the strain, Learn nor account the pain, Dare, never grudge the throe.*' Our hearts echo the magnificent words addressed by the American Ambassador to t~_is great benefactor of mankind :

" My lord, it is not a profession, it is not a nation, it is humanity itself which, with uncovered head, salutes you."