Some Aspects of Lister's Scientific Work

Abstract

MY qualifications to write on certain aspects of Lister's scientific work rest on an acquaintance with his published writings. I have studied these critically by themselves and in relation to the writings on the same subjects by his contemporaries. For more than ten years I also had the great privilege of knowing Lord Lister in a manner which, considering the great disparity of our positions, I may say was almost intimate. As bacteriologist to the British Institute of Preventive Medicine I had to visit him as chairman almost weekly, to keep him in touch with the progress of the work in the antitoxin department. Even after I left the service of the Institute he frequently asked me to call upon him in connexion with scientific work in which he was interested. In this way I was a great deal in his company and, among the younger men of that time, probably saw more of him than any one else.