Scientific worthies : [No.] 29, Sir Joseph Lister / [Hermann Tillmanns].
- Hermann Tillmanns
- Date:
- [1896]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Scientific worthies : [No.] 29, Sir Joseph Lister / [Hermann Tillmanns]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![constructed apparatus ; and so, also, in respect of all else. Steam thus provides us nowadays with non-irritant bandaging materials free from germs with even greater certainty than did their earlier impregnation with anti¬ septic substances, for bacteria may always be found after the lapse of time in dry bandages which have been dipped in either carbolic acid or corrosive sublimate. Instead of sponges we now use muslin absorbents sterilised by steam, and these, like every other fragment of bandaging material, are burnt after being used but once. In short, the technique of modern surgery is based on Lister’s method, and takes for its watchword “asepsis without the use of antiseptics.” Antisepsis has given place to asepsis, but the latter is just as surely based on the ground first broken by Lister. The results of operations carried out under aseptic precautions are magnificent. Surgery now celebrates its greatest triumphs in dealing with the skull and cranial cavity, with the brain, spinal column and spinal canal, with the thoracic and abdominal viscera, with bones and joints, with tendons and nerves. For accidental injuries, or wounds which are already infected, the older anti¬ septics are still employed, although we know that the complete disinfection of a festering wound is most difficult, nay almost impossible, for we cannot sufficiently reach the microbes lurking in the substance of the tissues. What we chiefly look to in this case is the efficient removal of the purulent secretion from the wound, securing this by free incisions and drainage. Sir Joseph Lister must indeed experience a glorious feeling of deepest satisfaction when he surveys the labours of his life. His work is accomplished and brought to an incomparable conclusion. He has con¬ quered and attained his object. When we but compare the surgery of thirty years ago, before Lister appeared on the scene, with that of to-day, what a change we see ! We can scarcely carry oUrselves back in imagination to the pre-antiseptic days of surgery, but each one who has known the older state of things from personal ex¬ perience, cannot fail to realise with fuller understanding and livelier joy how great a blessing Lister is to suffering humanity. Formerly the healing of injuries or wounds after an operation lay by no means certainly in the hands of the surgeon. In many hospitals the conditions which existed before the advent of Lister were simply incredible. Innumerable victims were snatched away to death by traumatic infections. And how do things stand now? To-day, thanks to Lister, we can heal the most grievous injuries and carry out the most difficult operations with¬ out inflammation, suppuration, or fever. We have now a firmly grounded confidence in our surgical art, and our patients, too, trust to the capabilities of modern surgery, for they know that we can heal the wounds we make. The possibility now afforded by Listerian method of preserving and giving back health and life to our patients has led to the growth among the surgeons of every nation of a pride in their professional activities, which finds its expression in the form of active theoretical and practical work. Science and art are international. The doctors of all nations are fighting shoulder to shoulder for the welfare of suffering humanity, and we Germans recognise without a suspicion of jealousy that the sun of modern surgery first rose in the person of Sir Joseph Lister and in NO. 1384, VOL. 5 4] England. The word surgery in its origin signifies a handicraft ; but that which was thus manual at first has become an art and a science which has, thanks above all to Lister, raised itself with impetuous and surprising speed in the last twenty years to a previously unknown height of development. Modern surgery no longer stops short at the exterior, but has gone even deeper, and now includes within the sphere of its activity every organ of the human body without exception. And for this man¬ kind is indebted in the first place to Sir Joseph Lister. As far as there is an earthly immortality it must be his, for as long as ever surgery is scientifically discussed his name cannot fail to be mentioned. H. Tillmanns. Sir Joseph Lister is not, as has been often stated, a Scotchman. He was born at Upton, in Essex, which was then a pretty suburban village, though it has long since been completely swallowed up in the metropolis, and here the greater part of his early life was spent. His father, Joseph Jackson Lister, was a man of rare ability, who devoted the intervals of business to scientific pursuits. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and is best known for his work on the improvement of the microscope, which is embodied in a paper in the Philosophical Trans¬ actions for 1831, “On some Properties in Achromatic Object-glasses applicable to the Microscope.” Other papers of his appeared in the Philosophical Transactions, one of which was written in conjunction with the well- known Dr. Hodgkin, who belonged, like him, to the Society of Friends. They were the first to describe the tendency of the red corpuscles of the blood to arrange themselves in rouleaux. Sir Joseph Lister was thus early imbued with scientific tastes, and learned by example, if he did not inherit by descent, the habit of accurate observation and relentless logic ; in short, that capacity for taking pains which has been in a special manner the characteristic feature of his genius. He was educated at a private Quaker school at Tottenham, which numbered amongst its pupils at about the same time the late Mr. William Edward Forster and Dr. Wilson Fox ; and afterwards he became a student at University College, London, from which he graduated B.A. at the University of London in 1847. He then entered upon his medical studies at University College, and here he came under the influence of Sharpey, which possibly had something to do with turning his attention, in the first place, to the study of physiology. His first publications appeared in the year 1853, whilst he was still a student, “On the Muscular Tissue of the Skin ” and, “ On the Contractile Tissue of the Iris.” He began his surgical studies just at the close of the career of Liston, one of the last of the brilliant and rapid operators of the last generation ; and he was one of the first house surgeons to Mr.—now Sir John—Erichsen. After a very distinguished career at the hospital and the University, where he graduated M.B. in 1852, he went to Edinburgh, to see the surgical practice there. Here he was closely associated with, and soon became deeply attached to the late Prof. Syme, whose daughter he subse¬ quently married. At first he was Mr. Syme’s house surgeon, but before long he was appointed Assistant Surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, and Extra-Academical Lecturer on](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30592069_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
