On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures, Abscess [...] [with] On the Antiseptic Principle [...] [with] The Antiseptic System [...]; in The Lancet, A Journal of British and Foreign Medicine [...]

London: Elsevier, 1867. First Edition. Hardcover. very good. 2 vols. 1st edition (the 1st appearances anywhere). Contemporary cloth, short splits at the base of the joints neatly closed, library blind stamps on the title pages, else very good. This is the whole of both books, and they are, obviously, much better than, and rarer than, and should not be compared to, torn out pages (extractions). [1] Vol. I has 4 of the 5 parts of Lister's On a New Method of Treating Compound Fractures..., pages 326-329, 357-359, 387-389, and 507-509. [2] Vol. II has the 5th part, pages 95-96. [3] Vol. II also has Lister's 2nd article, On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery, pages 353-356, and [4] his 3rd article, The Antiseptic System of Treatment..., pages 668-669, cumulatively changing surgery, the lives of those practicing it, and those undergoing it, to this day, and there is universal reverence for the magnitude of this medical divination. Rare. Refs: PMM, 316c (the 1st 5-part article). Grolier, 100 Books Famous in Medicine, 75 (also the 1st article). Dibner, Heralds of Science, 133 (the 2nd and 3rd articles). Norman 1367 (also the 2nd and 3rd articles). "As head of the surgical wards at Glasgow's Royal Infirmary, Lister was appalled by the 40% mortality rate among surgery patients, most of it caused by gangrene, erysipelas, septicemia, and other post-operative infections. After studying the problem, he came to believe that wound suppuration was a form of putrefaction and was confirmed in his belief by the writings of Pasteur, who had recently proved that putrefaction was a fermentative process caused by living microorganisms. Lister adopted carbolic acid as a weapon against microorganisms after learning of its efficacy in sewage treatment [all praise to the flair of bringing a discovery in one domain and applying it in another] and used it in 11 cases of compound fracture, 9 of which recovered. He then applied his antiseptic techniques to the treatment of abscesses with similar success. Lister described his remarkable achievements in this classic series of reports, his first work on the antiseptic principle in surgery." -Norman 1366

Among copious bursts of mindful observation in these articles, 2 of them, concerning the healing capacity of tissue, if it is protected from infection, stand out to me: 1. That a carbolized blood clot becomes organized into living tissue by the ingrowth of surrounding cells and blood vessels. 2. That portions of dead bone in an aseptic wound are absorbed by adjacent granulation tissue. What a debt we all owe Dr. Lister.