dence
was assured. In July 1867, when he was just forty years old, he felt it
to be his duty to communicate what he had learnt and to put his
experience at the disposal of his fellow workers. He wrote then to _The
Lancet_ describing in detail eleven cases of compound fracture under his
care, in which one patient had died, one had lost a limb, and the other
nine had been successfully cured. This ratio of success to failure was
far in advance of the average practice of the time; but, for all that,
it is not surprising that he met with the common fate which rewards
pioneers in new fields of study. It is true that other reforms were
helping to reduce the number of fatal cases. Florence Nightingale had
led the way, and much had been learnt about hospital management. It was
possible to maintain that good results had been achieved by other
methods, and that Lister's proofs were in no way decisive. But there was
no need for critics to misapprehend the nature of his claims or to
introduce the personal element and accuse him of plagiarism. Sir James
Simpson revived the memory of a Frenchman, Lemaire, who had used
carbolic acid and written about it in 1860, and refused to give Lister
any credit for his discoveries. As a fact Lister had never heard of
Lemaire or his work; and, besides, the Frenchman had never known the
principles on which Lister based his work, nor did he succeed in
converting others to his practice. How little the personal question need
be raised between men of the highest character is shown by the relations
of Darwin and Wallace, who arrived independently and almost
simultaneously at their theory of the origin of species, Wallace put his
notes, the fruit of many years of work, at the disposal of Darwin; and
both continued to labour at the establishment of truth, each giving
generous recognition to the other's part in the work.

Unmoved then by this and other attacks, Lister continued his experiments
and spent the greatest pains, for years in succession, in improving the
details of his treatment. It would take too long to narrate his
struggles with carbolized silk and catgut in the search for the perfect
ligature, which should be absorbed by the living tissues without setting
up putrefaction in the wound; or his countless experiments to find a
dressing which should be antiseptic without bringing any irritating
substance near the vital spot. These latter finally resulted in the
choice of the cyanide gauze, which wi