Among operating surgeons few names take higher rank than those of Liston and Syme, at one time close associates in private medical teaching at Edinburgh, at a later period jealous rivals and even antagonists, but happily again warm friends before the sudden end of the elder. ROBERT LISTON was born on the 28th October 1794, his father being the Rev. Henry Liston, minister of Ecclesmachan, Linlithgow, whose accomplishments included a considerable acquaintance with the theory of music, and who wrote a treatise on Perfect Intonation in addition to inventing an organ calculated to produce the desired intonation. He was educated chiefly by his father up to the age of fourteen, and afterwards attended classical and mathematical lectures in Edinburgh University during two sessions, obtaining a prize for Latin composition in the second. At this period of his life he exhibited great fondness for the sea, and was only induced to give up his desire to become a sailor by a promise that if he would study medicine he should eventually be a naval surgeon if he wished. His taste for a seafaring life never forsook him; and one of the relaxations which he most enjoyed up to within a few weeks of his death, was sailing in a yacht which he kept on the Thames. He was also very fond of field-sports. In 1810 Liston commenced medical study as the pupil of Dr. Barclay, the well-known anatomical lecturer. He soon became noted by his instructor for his zeal and untiring assiduity, and he eventually chose him as his assistant and prosector, an office he retained until 1815. It was thus that Liston acquired the foundation of his remarkable knowledge of surgical anatomy, which his later experience strengthened, and to which he added a dexterity in the use of surgical instruments, and especially the knife, which was unsurpassed in his time.