We may note that already in 1864 Mr. Wells had treated of hospital atmosphere, organic germs as causes of excessive mortality, and commented on the researches of Polli with sulphur and the sulphites, before as yet the antiseptic treatment had come prominently forward. When Mr. Lister’s system became established, Mr. Wells gladly adopted all its essentials in his operations—the spray, carbolised sponges, instruments, &c. He is convinced that by these precautions those patients who have recovered have suffered much less from fever, while convalescence has been more rapid than it used to be. In fact, the general result of the ovariotomy of the past twenty-five years is “thousands of perishing women have been rescued from death; many more thousands of years of human life, health, enjoyment, and usefulness have been given to the race, and to all future victims of a malady before inevitable in its fatality, consolation, hope, and almost certainty of cure.” The good influence of this success has, Sir James Paget says, extended to every department of operative surgery, and will always continue to be felt. It has led to an extension of the whole domain of peritoneal surgery, leading surgeons to attempt and persevere until successful in many operations formerly considered quite out of reach. Sir Spencer Wells is by no means content with promoting the progress of operative surgery; he looks forward to prevention with the greatest hope, and advocates measures calculated to promote accurate research in pathology. He is a strong supporter of any possible action by the College of Surgeons in this direction. He says: “While we modern surgeons congratulate our science on its liberation from the trammels of tradition; upon its working in an atmosphere cleared of the mist of superstition; upon the changing of its mode of action from a blind grappling with the phantom entities of a disease to a study and manipulation of overnourished or degenerating tissues; upon its having laws which can be understood and rules of practice which can be followed, we ought not to overlook one fact, which perhaps is more evident to outsiders than to ourselves, standing as we do in the dust and turmoil of the arena of our work. I mean that that work, good and useful as it is, has too much the character of what is technically called ‘salvaging’—is too much in correlation with what is done by the lifeboat service.”