LISTER.* Sin RICKMAN GODLEE has written a book which needs
no review : it takes its place among the books which are bought and held in honour. There is no man living who was so near to Lister in family, in science, and in practice.: this Life of Lister is authori- tative, complete, and altogether delightful : and it will hold its own above the flood of lesser books, not only in our libraries but in our thoughts.
• Lord Lirter. By Sir Rickman John Godlee, Bt., K.C.V.O., M.S.. F.R.C.S. Umiak; intendllon arid Co. Lida. uat.1 Ia 1877, when he came from Edinburgh to Loacion, Lister was fifty years old.. We who onti knew him from 1877 onward saw only the structure, not the foundations, of his work. Few of us knew more than the bare outline of his earlier life. lothing in London, nor all the honours which came to him altos 1877, could de more than repeat what Glasgow and Edinburgh had already achieved in
He was born at Upton House, Essex—country then, London now —on April 5th, 1827. His parents were of the Society of Friends : he remained a member of the Society to the time of his marriage, 1856: and its influences helped to make him what he was all through his life—quiet, peaceful, and of profound faith. In the Upton circle were Elizabeth Fry, Samuel Gurney, and other well- known Quaker families. His father was admirable : not only in business, but in love of science and of scholarship : especially in mathematics and optics : and, as the inventor of the achromatic lens and other improvements of the microscope, he was elected a Follow of the Royal Society.
Over preliminary and medical education, at University College and University College Hospital, Lister spent nine years, from 1844 to 1853. There was a time of excessive seriousness, even of depression : it was dispelled by the happiness of resident life at the Hospital, as Rouse-physician and House-surgeon. In 1853, he published two papers in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, on some notable microscopical and experimental work of his awn. In September, 1853, he went to Edinburgh, to learn something of Syme's methods : went for a month, stayed for seven years. Spa° delighted in him, made him his House-surgeon and his assistant in private practice : he was appointed to a lecturership in surgery, and to an assistant-surgeoncy at the Infirmary: he fell in love with Syme's daughter Agnes, and she accepted him. At the end of these seven years came his appointment to be Professor of Surgery in Glasgow, and a surgeon to the Glasgow Infirmary. He had worked in- cessantly, in Edinburgh, to make his lectures valuable, not by mere book-reading and restatement of other men's ideas, but by hard microscopical and experimental researches. Two great problems —the early stages of inflammation and the coagulation of the blood— had especially occupied him : he had slaved over them. These long researches prepared him for the study of wound-infections they led him toward the great discovery. The condition of the Glasgow Infirmary was no worse than that of many other institutions at home or abroad : but it was bad enough. He fought by every means in his power to improve things : he saw what other men, of less science or less sensitiveness, failed to see—the bearing of Pasteur's facts on operative surgery : and, in 1865, he ventured to treat his first case on the lines of the antiseptic method. In 1869 he was appointed Professor of Surgery in Edinburgh, and a surgeon to the Edinburgh Infirmary: This second Edinburgh period, from 1869 to 1877, was the happiest time of his life. In 1877, he gave up all Edinburgh for the final conversion of London. In 1893, Lady Lister died : they had no children : and her death slowly loosened his hold on life. In 1908, he left London for Weimer, and there died, after years of enfeeblement and seclusion, on February 10th, 1912.
One looks at his life and work as one looks at an English landscape on a fine day : pure air, a clear sky, silence, and on all aides the vision of well-cultivated woods and parks and fields, watered by quiet rivers : our own country, in the fullness of its divine and human nature, so beautiful that it seems to be at rest, and so productive that it seems to be incessantly busy : one looks in and in, and never comes to the end of all that is to be seen and made out and guessed at and admired. So it is with Lister's life: one looks in and in, finding and admiring a hundred things, till the light is gone. Among so many, what is the use of quoting, a scrap hero and a scrap there ? Probably no book ever before told the history of a discovery at such length and with such completeness. The discovery began in 1865: it went on almost to the end of his working life : not till 1887 did he venture, at last, to disregard as negligible the risk of infection from the air, and thus to abandon the Use of the antiseptic. spray: and long after 1887 he was still in quest of the perfect antiseptic dressing. There cannot be an " abstract" of thirty years of a man's work. All who remember him, and the interminable talk and arguments and misunderstandings over " Listerism," will rejoice that Sir Rickman Godlee has given us the whole story, point by point, once and for ever. And those of us who belong to what the doctors call "the laity" will b3 glad to study for themselves the laborious patience, the clinical, physical, chemical, bacteriological, and physiological work, year in, year out, by which Lister slowly perfected his method.
London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Edinburgh again, London again —there is no saying which of these periods will most interest the reader. Some will think the earlier years make the best reading : some, the later years. All that the reviewer cares for is to tell everybody to make haste and get the book,. For it is half-a-dozen books in one. It is a history of a great discovery : a survey of the rise of " modern surgery" in our own country and in other countries : a record of the world's deliverance out of grievous pain and misery: a study of the world's dealings with things of science and of practice : above all, it is the portrait, the very image, of Lister.
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