“JOSEPH LISTER.” In Lister’s wards, the instruments, sponges and other articles used for dressings were first of all purified in a strong solution of carbolic acid. The same precautions were taken for the hands of the surgeon and of his assistants. During the whole course of each operation, a vaporizer of carbolic solution created around the wound an antiseptic atmosphere; after it was over, the wound was again washed with the carbolic solution. Special articles were used for dressing: a sort of gauze, similar to tarlatan and impregnated with a mixture of resin, paraffin and carbolic, maintained an antiseptic atmosphere around the wound. Such was--in its main lines--Lister’s method. A medical student, M. Just Lucas-Championnière--who later on became an exponent in France of this method, and who described it in a valuable treatise published in 1876--had already in 1869, after a journey to Glasgow, stated in the _Journal de médecine et de chirurgie pratique_ what were those first principles of defence against gangrene--“extreme and minute care in the dressing of wounds.” But his isolated voice was not heard; neither was any notice taken of a celebrated lecture given by Lister at the beginning of 1870 on the penetrating of germs into a purulent centre and on the utility of antisepsis applied to clinical practice. A few months before the war, Tyndall, the great English physicist, alluded to this lecture in an article entitled “Dusts and Diseases,” which was published by the _Revue des cours scientifiques_. But the heads of the profession in France had at that time absolute confidence in themselves, and nobody took any interest in the rumour of success attained by the antiseptic method. Yet, between 1867 and 1869, thirty-four of Lister’s patients out of forty had survived after amputation. It is impossible on reading of this not to feel an immense sadness at the thought of the hundreds and thousands of young men who perished in ambulances and hospitals during the fatal year, and who might have been saved by Lister’s method. In his own country, Lister had also been violently criticized. “People turned into ridicule Lister’s minute precautions in the dressing of wounds,” writes a competent judge, Dr. Auguste Reaudin, a professor at the Geneva Faculty of Medicine, “and those who lost nearly all their patients by poulticing them had nothing but sarcasms for the man who was so infinitely superior to them.” Lister, with his calm courage and smiling kindliness, let people talk, and endeavoured year by year to perfect his method, testing it constantly and improving it in detail. No one, however sceptical, whom he invited to look at his results, could preserve his scepticism in the face of such marked success.