Lister / [Research Defence Society].

  • Research Defence Society (Great Britain)
Date:
[1916]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lister / [Research Defence Society]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with crude undiluted carbolic acid. That was the beginning of “ modern surgery,” which saves, year in year out, all the world over, a thousandfold more lives and limbs than were lost at Agincourt and Waterloo. Pasteur and Lister—we have always to think of them together, and can hardly think of them apart. They had many gifts in common : the same diligence, humility, simplicity of life, inces¬ sant self-judgment, absolute truthfulness, and resolute will to help suffering humanity. In the circumstances of early life, they were unlike. Pasteur was the son of a tanner, who had served under Napoleon; he was brought up in a little French country town, with few “ advantages ”; he learned to believe in the Catholic Church, in France, and in the glorious tradition of the French Army. Lister was the son of a prosperous London merchant, who also was a man of science, known to all rnicro- scopists as the maker of the achromatic lens. He was born and brought up in a pleasant country house—country then, but London now—Upton Manor, where now is Upton Park, E. His people were of the Society of Friends. In the later years he kept the distinctive note of the earlier years, the quietude of the inner life, and he even kept, in his letters to his father, the use of thee ” and “ thou.” Home gave him that good1 blend of quiet religion with steady intellectual culture which is the rule in “ the best Quaker families ”; and he enjoyed all the advantages of a high level of education, interests, and friendships. Thus unlike in their bringing up, Pasteur and Lister were unlike also in what they had to endure in the middle years of life. Pasteur, between 1865 and 1870, had to bear, as best he could, the burden of illness, of threefold bereavement, and of the agony of the Franco-Prussian War. Lister had not such tragedy. Up to 1893, when the death of Lady Lister—they had no children —left him without much to live for, he never wanted for happi¬ ness ; he had his share of anxieties and difficulties, but no time of profound misery. This difference between the two men was written in their faces ; and I have often wished that we could have a portrait of Pasteur by Rembrandt, and! a portrait of Lister by Raeburn. The Rembrandt portrait would have given us the heavy sombre look of Pasteur’s face, the intentness of the eyes, the touch of passion under restraint, the signs of grief and of ill-health. The Raeburn portrait—but no .artist could put on canvas a face so- sensitive as Lister’s. In “ Hospital Idylls,” Henley has described it well; he was one of Lister’s patients in the old Edinburgh Infirmary. It was a face delightful to watch, but hard to interpret. Part of its charm was the delicate, clear pink-and-white complexion; part was the gentle dignity, and the air of thoughtful kindness. It was not what people call a very strong face, not vivid, nor sharply marked; it did not look so purposeful or masterful as he was. It was the face of a very good man, steadily wise, and at peace with himself; the curves of the mouth soft and subtle, the