(London: The Lancet; George Fall, Sept. 21 - Nov. 30, 1867).

SCARCE, JOSEPH LISTER’S SECOND OF TWO EPOCH-MAKING PAPERS ON ANTISEPSIS, one of the most important advances in medical science and quite possibly the one responsible for the greatest number of lives saved by a single medical technique.
In 1860 Lister was appointed Regius Professor of Surgery in Glasgow. As in other hospitals at that time, the mortality rate at Glasgow for amputations and compound fractures exceeded forty percent due to rampant infection. Lister had for some years been studying the processes of inflammation and suppuration, and in the early 1860's "began declaring suppuration a form of decomposition. The prevailing medical doctrine about the cause of putrefaction derived from Liebig's dictum (1839) that organic substances in the moist state and in the presence of oxygen undergo a peculiar state of combustion" (DSB). The resulting supposition that one should shield wounds from the effects of atmospheric oxygen led to often harmful treatments. "Lister realized that oxygen could not be excluded from wounds, and he soon doubted its responsibility for provoking suppuration" (op. cit.). In 1865, a colleague introduced him to the work of Pasteur, whose revelation of the causes of wound sepsis provided Lister "the key for the banishment of hospital diseases" (ibid.). "To prevent bacterial infection, Lister began using carbolic acid, a chemical that was then routinely used by the city of Carlisle to disinfect sewage. In a series of surgical cases he succeeded in completely eliminating infection. Although Lister was in error in assuming that the primary sources of infection were airborne, he had established the principle that the control of infection depended on the control of microorganisms" (Grolier Medicine).
Presented here is the second of Lister’s two primary papers on antisepsis, ‘read to the British Medical Association at their Dublin meeting of August 9, 1867. Lister announced that consistent application of his antiseptic treatment had entirely freed his Glasgow wards from hospital sepsis. After acknowledging his debt to Pasteur, he details his recommended procedures and describes further case histories of patients treated since the publication of his previous article.
Like Semmelweis' recommendations for the implementation of aseptic hospital conditions a decade earlier, Lister's ideas initially encountered indifference or outright hostility in the surgical community, especially in Britain. Eventually a number of favorable reports, from German surgeons in particular, began to turn the tide, and by the eighties and nineties a return was made to the aseptic recommendations of Semmelweis. “With the further work of Ernst von Bergmann in Berlin, antisepis and clouds of irritating carbolic acid mist gave way in the 1880’s to aseptic surgery and the aseptic routines which characterize the modern operating room” (Grolier Medicine 75). In recognition of Lister's services to humanity, he was the first medical practitioner elevated to the peerage.’ (Norman)
Also included in this collection of journal extracts are Lister’s replies to unfounded accusations made by Sir James Simpson that Lister had plagiarized from works by surgeons in France and Germany, most specifically the French chemist Jules Lemaire. There is also one further follow-up article included by Lister on his antiseptic methods. Item #19620

First edition of these important articles and letters as printed in the journal ‘The Lancet’. Extracted from the various journal numbers and now presented bound together. Folio journal leaves (265x185mm), bound together in gray paper-covered boards with manuscript lettering on the spine and housed in a black cloth-covered slipcase with folding chemise and lettered in gilt. Together 18pp., comprised of pages 353-358; 667-670; 409-410; 443-444; 501-502; 595-596. Very well preserved in fine state.