Lister, the Man
Joseph Lister. By Hector Charles Cameron. (Heinemann. 17s. 6d.) A coon many years ago one of Lister's nieces—herself already then an old lady—told the present' writer that Quakerism was not a creed but a way of life. To the better informed that would perhaps have been a truism. But to some extent it explains Lister the man. It is true that he ceased nominally to be a Quaker when he married, at the age of twenty-nine, Agnes Syme, one of the daughters of Edinburgh's leading surgeon. It was then a rule of the Society of Friends that marriages outside the confraternity could not be accepted. But his long Quaker ancestry, his Quaker upbringing and his own temperament were to ensure that, in all essentials, he remained a Quaker to the end of his life. The deep sense of a divine purpose in the universe, the industry, integrity, the gravitas and the slight aloofness from many of the commoner pleasures of mankind, ordinarily associated with the word Quaker—all these were to be found in him • and, reinforced by his profound personal modesty, they were to make real intimacy with him a little difficult for the majority of his fellows.
His patients, of course, adored him, especially the children. " It's us wee yins he likes the best," said a small Edinburgh boy, "and Next it's the auld women" ; and once, when he found a little girl sobbing because her doll, which was leaking sawdust, had been removed by a nurse, he sent for a needle and cotton, and the most- discussed surgeon in Europe sutured the doll's wound and restored its owner to happiness. From his assistants and students, too, he evoked almot limitless homage. But it was rather—in the earlier days—for the inspiring captain in a revolutionary, but still-to-be- won, war ; and later his world-fame was such that he was inevitably regarded as on a pedestal. It was not a pedestal that he had sought, but he lacked the particular kind of bonhomie to make younger men forget it. There were exceptions, however. One of his first lieutenants was Hector Clare Cameron, who became a close and lifelong friend. It is this Hector's son, Dr. Hector Charles Cameron, who has now written, fortified by boyhood and family memories, this new life of Lister.
As Dr. Cameron says, there is probably nothing new to be said about the technical aspects of Lister's achievement. It was given to him to realise the possible bearing of Pasteur's work on pathogenic micro-organisms upon the sepsis that, in every surgical ward in the world, was regularly destroying human lives. It was Lister who devised means for their slaughter and demonstrated, for the whole world to see, the basic and preventable cause of nearly all this misery. The principle was not destroyed when an operating technique of a-sepsis superseded that of anti-sepsis. Lister still remains the great landmark between the old and the new ; and most of modern surgery was only made possible by his genius, his patience and his gentle but wholly inflexible will-power.
Dr. Cameron has therefore been mainly concerned to reveal, as far as possible, to a new generation Lister as a human being ; and few will read* his book without falling under the old spell and finding themselves in the presence, for once at least, of unchallenge- able greatness. Lister was no doubt in some ways fortunate. He had enjoyed the love and wisdom of a father who was himself a distinguished scientist ; and he was always a comparatively wealthy man. His marriage was cloudlessly happy, and his wife was able to keep his unpunctuality within reasonable bounds and to help him over the enormous difficulties that he had to face whenever he tried to express himself in a lecture or in print. But other surgeons have been endowed with advantages as great ; and there has been
Previous page
