Here we must limit our detailed account of the antiseptic system. Under it large abscesses are opened, the matter pressed out, and fresh matter does not form, and cures are effected in severe cases which scarcely ever used to be cured. Arteries are tied with a security before unknown. Amputations and excisions are effected with a safety and diminished mortality quite surprising. Even senile gangrene shows hopeful results which were previously quite out of question. Pyæmia, hospital gangrene, and erysipelas have been almost banished from wards where the system is properly carried out. Recently a modification has been introduced, in which there is employed, not a volatile material as in the case of carbolic acid, but a dilute solution of corrosive sublimate combined with albumen. Gauze is now prepared for Sir Joseph Lister steeped in this substance, and it may become generally adopted; but it does not appear likely to supersede carbolic acid for the purification of instruments, sponges, the skin, or as a substitute for the carbolic spray. The particular form of antiseptic is a matter of detail, on which improvement may long continue to be made; but the development of the essential idea of preventing the access of germs which can cause putrefactive changes by one method or another, and the destruction of them as far as possible when they have obtained access, will remain connected with Sir Joseph Lister as an achievement of the highest force; indeed his name seems likely to give a new word to our language, namely Listerism, by which the essential features of his system are understood. Professor Lister was awarded a Royal Medal by the Royal Society of London in 1880, having previously received the high distinction of the MacDougall Brisbane Prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1875, for a remarkable paper on the Germ Theory of Fermentative Changes. He was created a baronet in December 1883. The universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Glasgow had conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., and Oxford that of D.C.L. He has been for some years Surgeon to King’s College Hospital, having succeeded Sir William Fergusson. FOOTNOTES: [12] _Monthly Microscopical Journal_, 1870, iii. p. 143. CHAPTER XIX. _SIR THOMAS WATSON, SIR DOMINIC CORRIGAN, SIR WILLIAM GULL, AND CLINICAL MEDICINE._ The Nestor of the medical profession, Sir Thomas Watson, died in 1882, at the great age of ninety, universally beloved and honoured. Yet he had written but one extended work, the “Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic,” and had made no striking discovery. But to have written a book which every cultivated practitioner reads, and reads with delight and satisfaction, is an achievement given to few, many though there be who aim at it. And Sir Thomas Watson’s personal character was as unique as his advice was valuable.