adapted in Ital. _lista_ and Fr. _liste_), properly a border or edging.
The word was thus formerly used of a geographical boundary or frontier
and of the lobe of the ear. In current usage "list" is the term applied
to the "selvage" of a piece of cloth, the edging, i.e. of a web left in
an unfinished state or of different material from the rest of the
fabric, to be torn or cut off when it is made up, or used for forming a
seam. A similar edging prevents unravelling. The material, cut off and
collected, is known as "list," and is used as a soft cheap material for
making slippers, padding cushions, &c. Until the employment of rubber,
list was used to stuff the cushions of billiard tables. The same word
probably appears, in a plural form "lists," applied to the barriers or
palisades enclosing a space of ground set apart for tilting (see
TOURNAMENT). It is thus used of any place of contest, and the phrase "to
enter the lists" is frequently used in the sense of "to challenge." The
word in this application was taken directly from the O. Fr. _lisse_,
modern _lice_, in Med. Lat. _liciae_. This word is usually taken to be a
Romanic adaptation of the Teutonic word. In medieval fortifications the
_lices_ were the palisades forming an outwork in front of the main walls
of a castle or other fortified place, and the word was also used of the
space enclosed between the palisades and the enceinte; this was used for
exercising troops, &c. From a transference of "list," meaning edge or
border, to a "strip" of paper, parchment, &c., containing a "list" of
names, numbers, &c., comes the use of the word for an enumeration of a
series of names of persons or things arranged in order for some specific
purpose. It is the most general word for such an enumeration, other
words, such as "register," "schedule," "inventory," "catalogue," having
usually some particular connotation. The chief early use of list in this
meaning was of the roll containing the names of soldiers; hence to "list
a soldier" meant to enter a recruit's name for service, in modern usage
"to enlist" him. There are numerous particular applications of "list,"
as in "civil list" (q.v.), "active or retired list" in the navy or army.
The term "free list" is used of an enumeration of such commodities as
may at a particular time be exempt from the revenue laws imposing an
import duty.
The verb "to list," most commonly found in the imperative, meaning
"hark!" is another form of "listen," and is to be referred, as to its
ultimate origin, to an Indo-European root _klu_-, seen in Gr. [Greek:
klyein], to hear, [Greek: kleos], glory, renown, and in the English
"loud." The same root is seen in Welsh _clûst_ and Irish _clûas_, ear.
Another word "list," meaning pleasure, delight, or, as a verb, meaning
"to please, choose," is chiefly found in such phrases as "the wind
bloweth where it listeth." This is from the O.E. _lystan_, cf. Dut.
_lusten_, Ger. _lüsten_, to take pleasure in, and is also found in the
English doublet "lust," now always used in the sense of an evil or
more particularly sexual desire. It is probably an application of this
word, in the sense of "inclination," that has given rise to the
nautical term "list," for the turning over of a ship on to its side.
LISTA Y ARAGON, ALBERTO (1775-1848), Spanish poet and educationalist,
was born at Seville on the 15th of October 1775. He began teaching at
the age of fifteen, and when little over twenty was made professor of
elocution and poetry at Seville university. In 1813 he was exiled, on
political grounds, but pardoned in 1817. He then returned to Spain and,
after teaching for three years at Bilbao, started a critical review at
Madrid. Shortly afterwards he founded the celebrated college of San
Mateo in that city. The liberal character of the San Mateo educational
system was not favoured by the government, and in 1823 the college was
closed. Lista after some time spent in Bayonne, Paris and London was
recalled to Spain in 1833 to edit the official _Madrid Gazette_. He was
one of the founders of the Ateneo, the free university of Madrid, and up
till 1840 was director of a college at Cadiz. All the leading spirits of
the young generation of Spaniards, statesmen, writers, soldiers and
diplomatists came under his influence. He died at Seville on the 5th of
October 1848.
LISTER, JOSEPH LISTER, 1st BARON (1827- ), English surgeon, was born at
Upton, in Essex, on the 5th of April 1827. His father, Joseph Jackson
Lister, F.R.S., was eminent in science, especially in optical science,
his chief claim to remembrance being that by certain improvements in
lenses he raised the compound microscope from the position of a
scientific toy, "distorting as much as it magnified," to its present
place as a powerful engine of research. Other members of Lord Lister's
family were eminent in natural science. In his boyhood Joseph Lister was
educated at Quaker schools; first at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and
afterwards at Tottenham, near London. In 1844 he entered University
College, London, as a student in arts, and took his B.A. degree at the
University of London in 1847. He continued at University College as a
medical student, and became M.B. and F.R.C.S. in 1852. The keen young
student was not long in bringing his faculties to bear upon pathology
and the practice of medicine. While house-surgeon at University College
Hospital, he had charge of certain cases during an outbreak of hospital
gangrene, and carefully observed the phenomena of the disease and the
effects of treatment upon it. He was thus early led to suspect the
parasitic nature of the disorder, and searched with the microscope the
material of the spreading sore, in the hope of discovering in it some
invading fungus; he soon convinced himself of the cardinal truth that
its causes were purely local. He also minutely investigated cases of
pyaemia, another terrible scourge of hospitals at that time, and made
_camera lucida_ sketches of the appearances revealed by the microscope.
To realize Lister's work it is necessary to remember the condition of
surgical practice at that date. About the middle of the 19th century the
introduction of anaesthetics had relieved the patient of much of the
horror of the knife, and the surgeon of the duty of speed in his work.
The agony of the sufferer had naturally and rightly compelled the public
to demand rapid if not slap-dash surgery, and the surgeon to pride
himself on it. Within decent limits of precision, the quickest craftsman
was the best. With anaesthetics this state of things at any rate was
changed. The pain of the operation itself no longer counted, and the
surgeon was enabled not only to be as cautious and sedulous as
dexterous, but also to venture upon long, profound and intricate
operations which before had been out of the question. Yet unhappily this
new enfranchisement seemed to be but an ironical liberty of Nature, who
with the other hand took away what she had given. Direct healing of
surgical wounds ("by first intention"), far from being the rule, was a
piece of luck too rare to enter into the calculations of the operator;
while of the graver surgical undertakings, however successful
mechanically, the mortality by sepsis was ghastly. Suppuration,
phagedaena and septic poisonings of the system carried away even the
most promising patients and followed even trifling operations. Often,
too, these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences, so that
patients, however extreme their need, dreaded the very name of hospital,
and the most skilful surgeons distrusted their own craft. New hospitals
or new wards were built, yet after a very short time the new became as
pestiferous as the old; and even scrupulous care in ventilation and
housemaids' cleanliness failed to prevent the devastation. Surgery had
enlarged its freedom, but only to find the weight of its new
responsibilities more than it could bear.
When Lister was appointed to the chair of surgery in Glasgow the
infirmary of that city was a hotbed of septic disease; so much so that
his hospital visits evidently distressed him greatly. Windows were
widely opened, piles of clean towels were supplied, but still the
pestilence stalked through the wards. The building stands to-day as it
stood then, with no substantial alteration; but by the genius of Lister
its surgical wards are now as free from septic accidents as the most
modern hospital in the land. James Simpson, early in the 'sixties,
pathetically denounced the awful mortality of operations in hospitals,
and indeed uttered desperate protests against the hospital system
itself; yet, not long afterwards, Lister came to prove that it was not
in the hospital that the causes of that mortality lay hidden, but in the
operator himself, his tools and his assistants. Happily this beneficent
discovery was made in time to preserve the inestimable boon of the
hospital system from the counsels of despair. When Lister took up the
task speculation was on the wrong tack; the oxygen of the air was then
supposed to be the chief cause of the dissolution of the tissues, and to
prevent access of air was impossible. For instance, a simple fracture,
as of a bone of the leg, would do perfectly well, while in the very next
bed a compound fracture--one, that is, where the skin is lacerated, and
access to the seat of injury opened out--would go disastrously wrong. If
the limb were amputated, a large proportion of such cases of amputation
succumbed to septic poisoning.
On graduation as bachelor of medicine, Lister went to Edinburgh, where
he soon afterwards became house-surgeon to Mr Syme; and he was much
impressed by the skill and judgment of this great surgeon, and also by
the superiority of his method of dressing recent wounds with dry lint,
as compared with the "water dressing" in use at University College. Yet
under these more favourable conditions the amelioration was only one of
degree; in most wounds indeed "union by first intention" was rendered
impossible by the presence of the silk ligatures employed for arresting
bleeding, for these could come away only by a process of suppuration. On
the expiry of his house-surgeoncy in Edinburgh, Lister started in that
city an extra-academical course of lectures on surgery; and in
preparation for these he entered on a series of investigations into
inflammation and allied subjects. These researches, which were detailed
fully in three papers in _Phil. Trans._ (1859), and in his Croonian
lecture to the Royal Society in 1863, testified to an earnestness of
purpose, a persevering accuracy of observation and experiment and an
insight of scientific conception which show that if Lister had never
developed the aseptic method of surgery, he would have taken a very high
place in pathology. In his speech in Paris at the Thirteenth
International Congress of Medicine in 1900, Lord Lister said that he had
done no more than seize upon Pasteur's discoveries and apply them to
surgery. But though Lister saw the vast importance of the discoveries of
Pasteur, he saw it because he was watching on the heights; and he was
watching there alone. From Pasteur Lister derived no doubt two fruitful
ideas: first, that decomposition in organic substances is due to living
"germs"; and, secondly, that these lowly and minute forms of vegetable
life spring always, like higher organisms, from parents like themselves,
and cannot arise _de novo_ in the animal body. After his appointment to
the Glasgow chair in 1860, Lister had continued his researches on
inflammation; and he had long been led to suspect that decomposition of
the blood in the wound was the main cause of suppuration. The two great
theories established by Pasteur seemed to Lister to open out the
possibility of what had before appeared hopeless--namely, the prevention
of putrefaction in the wound, and consequently the forestalling of
suppuration. To exclude the oxygen of the air from wounds was
impossible, but it might be practicable to protect them from microbes.
The first attempt to realize this idea was made upon compound fractures;
and the means first employed was carbolic acid, the remarkable efficacy
of which in deodorizing sewage made Lister regard it as a very powerful
germicide. It was applied to the wound undiluted, so as to form with the
blood a dense crust, the surface of which was painted daily with the
acid till all danger had passed. The results, after a first failure,
were in the highest degree satisfactory, so that, as Lister said in his
presidential address to the British Association in Liverpool, he "had
the joy of seeing these formidable injuries follow the same safe and
tranquil course as simple fractures." The caustic property of undiluted
carbolic acid, though insignificant in comparison with the far greater
evils to be avoided in compound fracture, made it unsuited for general
surgery. To make it applicable to the treatment of abscesses and incised
wounds, it was necessary to mitigate its action by blending it with some
inert body; and the endeavour to find the best medium for this purpose,
such as to combine perfect antiseptic efficiency with the least possible
irritation of the tissues, formed the subject of experiments continued
for many years in the laboratory and in the ward. At one stage in these
inquiries an attempt was made to provide an atmosphere free from living
organisms by means of a fine spray of a watery solution of carbolic
acid; for it was then supposed by Lister to be necessary not only to
purify the surgeon's hands and instruments and the skin of the patient
about the seat of operation, but also to wage war with the microbes
which, as Pasteur had shown, people every cubic inch of the air of an
inhabited room. Under the use of the spray better results were obtained
than ever before, and this success encouraged its use. But researches
carried on for several years into the relations of the blood to
micro-organisms led Lister to doubt the harmfulness of the atmospheric
dust. At the London Congress in 1881 he narrated experiments which
proved that the serum of the blood is a very unfavourable soil for the
development of the bacteria diffused through the air, and others which
showed that the cells of an organizing blood-clot have a very remarkable
power of disposing of microbes and of limiting their advance. Hence he
considered it probable that in surgical operations the atmosphere might
be disregarded altogether.[1] As long, however, as this was only a
matter of probability, he did not dare to discard the spray. But at
length, at the Berlin Congress in 1890, he was able to announce that the
certainty he had so long desired had been arrived at. A careful
consideration of the physical constitution of the spray had shown him
that the microbes of the dust involved in its vortex could not possibly
have their vitality destroyed or even impaired by it. Such being the
case, the uniform success obtained when he had trusted the spray
implicitly as an aseptic atmosphere, abandoning completely certain other
precautions which he had before deemed essential, proved conclusively to
his mind that the air might safely be left entirely out of consideration
in operating.[2] Thus he learnt that not the spray only, but all
antiseptic irrigations or washings of the wound also, with their
attendant irritation of the cut surfaces, might be dispensed with--a
great simplification, indirectly due to experiments with the spray. The
spray had also served a very useful purpose by maintaining a pure
condition of the entourage of the operation; not indeed in the way for
which it was devised, but as a very mild form of irrigation. And Lister
took care to emphasize the necessity for redoubled vigilance on the part
of the surgeon and his assistants when this "unconscious caretaker," as
he called it, had been discarded.
The announcement that he had given up the spray was absurdly interpreted
in some quarters to mean that he had virtually abandoned his theory and
his antiseptic methods. The truth is that the spray was only one of many
devices tried for a while in the course of the long-continued endeavour
to apply the antiseptic principle to the best advantage, and abandoned
in favour of something better. Two main objects were always kept
steadily in view by him--during the operation to guard the wound against
septic microbes by such means as existing knowledge indicated, and
afterwards to protect it against their introduction, avoiding at the
same time all needless irritation of the tissues by the antiseptic. Upon
the technical methods of attaining these ends this is not the place to
enlarge; suffice it to say that the endowments and the industry of the
discoverer, as seen in the rapidity and flexibility of mind with which
he seized upon and selected the best means, were little less remarkable
than the activity of the same faculties in his original ideas.
To illustrate this opinion, his work on the ligature may be taken. It
had long been the universal practice of surgeons to employ threads of
silk or flax for tying arteries, long ends being left to provide escape
of the pus (invariably formed during the tedious process of the
separation of the ligature) together with the portion of the arterial
coats included in the knot. Lister hoped that if, by antiseptic means,
the thread were deprived of living microbes, it would no longer cause
suppuration, but might be left with short cut ends to become embedded
permanently among the tissues of the wound, which thus would be allowed
to heal by primary union throughout. A trial of this method upon the
carotid artery of a horse having proved perfectly successful, he applied
it in a case of aneurysm in the human subject; and here again the
immediate results were all that could be desired. But a year later, the
patient having died from other causes, the necropsy showed remnants of
the silk thread incompletely absorbed, with appearances around them
which seemed to indicate that they had been acting as causes of
disturbance. Thus was suggested to him the idea of employing for the
ligature some material susceptible of more speedy absorption; and the
antiseptic treatment of contused wounds having shown that dead tissue,
if protected from putrefaction, is removed by the surrounding structures
without the intervention of suppuration, he resolved to try a thread of
some such nature. Catgut, which is prepared from one of the constituents
of the small intestine of the sheep, after steeping in a solution of
carbolic acid, was used in a preliminary trial upon the carotid artery
of a calf. The animal was killed a month later, when, on dissection, a
very beautiful result was disclosed. The catgut, though removed, had not
been simply absorbed; pari passu with its gradual removal, fibrous
tissue of new formation had been laid down, so that in place of the dead
catgut was seen a living ligature embracing the artery and incorporated
with it. The wound meanwhile had healed without a trace of suppuration.
This success appeared to justify the use of the catgut ligature in the
human subject, and for a while the results were entirely satisfactory.
But though this was the case with the old samples of catgut first
employed, which, as Lister was afterwards led to believe, had been
"seasoned" by long keeping, it was found that when catgut was used fresh
as it comes from the makers, it was unsuited in various ways for
surgical purposes. The attempt by special preparation to obtain an
article in all respects trustworthy engaged his attention from time to
time for years afterwards. To quote the words of Sir Hector Cameron, who
was for several years assistant to Lord Lister, it required "labour and
toilsome investigation and experiment of which few can have any adequate
idea."
In 1869 Lister succeeded his father-in-law, Syme, in the chair of
clinical surgery of Edinburgh. In 1877 he accepted an invitation to the
chair of surgery at King's College, London, in the anticipation that
here he would be more centrally placed for communication with the
surgical world at home and abroad, and might thus exercise his
beneficent mission to more immediate advantage. In 1896 Lister retired
from practice, but not from scientific study. From 1895 to 1900 he was
President of the Royal Society. In 1883 he was created a baronet, and in
1897 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lister of Lyme Regis. Among
the Coronation honours in 1902, he was nominated an original member of
the new Order of Merit.
In England Lister's teaching was slow in making its way. The leading
surgeons of Germany were among the first to seize upon the new idea with
avidity and practical success; so early as 1875, in the course of a tour
he made on the Continent, great festivals were held in his honour in
Munich and Leipzig. The countrymen of Pasteur did not lag far behind;
and it is no exaggeration to speak of Lister's appearances in foreign
countries at this time as triumphal.
The relation of Semmelweiss to Lister is of historical importance.
Lister's work on the antiseptic system began in 1864; his first
publication on the subject was in March 1867. At this date, and for long
afterwards, Semmelweiss was unknown, or ignored, not only by French and
Germans, but also by his own Hungarian people; and this neglect broke
his heart. The French Academy pronounced against his opinions, and so
did the highest pathological authority in Germany. In England, till long
after his death, probably his name was not so much as mentioned. In the
early 'seventies Lister's method was in full operation in Hungary as
elsewhere, yet none of the surgeons of Budapest ever mentioned
Semmelweiss; not even when, in 1883, they gave a great banquet to
Lister. It was after this occasion that Dr Duka, a Hungarian physician
practising in London, wrote a biography of Semmelweiss, which he sent to
Lister, and thus brought Semmelweiss before him for the first time.
Thenceforth Lister generously regarded Semmelweiss as in some measure
his forerunner; though Semmelweiss was not aware of the microbic origin
of septic poisons, nor were his methods, magnificent as was their
success in lying-in hospitals, suitable for surgical work.
In public Lord Lister's speeches were simple, clear and graceful,
avoiding rhetorical display, earnest for the truth, jealous for his
science and art, forgetful of himself. His writings, in like manner
plain, lucid and forcible, scarcely betray the labour and thought of
their production. With the courtesy and serenity of his carriage he
combined a passionate humanity, so often characteristic of those who
come of the Society of Friends, and a simple love of truth which showed
itself in his generous encouragement of younger workers. (T. C. A.)
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See _Trans. of the International Medical Congress_ (1881), vol.
ii. p. 373.
[2] See _Verhandlungen des X internationalen Congresses_, Bd. i. p.
33.
LISTER, MARTIN (c. 1638-1712), English naturalist and physician, was
born at Radclive, near Buckingham. He was nephew of Sir Matthew Lister,
physician to Anne, queen of James I., and to Charles I. He was educated
at St John's College, Cambridge, 1655, graduated in 1658/9, and was
elected a fellow in 1660. He became F.R.S. in 1671. He practised
medicine at York until 1683, when he removed to London. In 1684 he
received the degree of M.D. at Oxford, and in 1687 became F.R.C.P. He
contributed numerous articles on natural history, medicine and
antiquities to the _Philosophical Transactions_. His principal works
were _Historiae animalium Angliae tres tractatus_ (1678); _Historiae
Conchyliorum_ (1685-1692), and _Conchyliorum Bivalvium_ (1696). As a
conchologist he was held in high esteem, but while he recognized the
similarity of fossil mollusca to living forms, he regarded them as
inorganic imitations produced in the rocks. In 1683 he communicated to
the Royal Society (_Phil. Trans._, 1684), _An ingenious proposal for a
new sort of maps of countries; together with tables of sands and clays,
such as are chiefly found in the north parts of England_. In this essay
he suggested the preparation of a soil or mineral map of the country,
and thereby is justly credited with being the first to realize the
importance of a geological survey. He died at Epsom on the 2nd of
February 1712.
LISTON, JOHN (c. 1776-1846), English comedian, was born in London. He
made his public _début_ on the stage at Weymouth as Lord Duberley in
_The Heir-at-law_. After several dismal failures in tragic parts, some
of them in support of Mrs Siddons, he discovered accidentally that his
_forte_ was comedy, especially in the personation of old men and country
boys, in which he displayed a fund of drollery and broad humour. An
introduction to Charles Kemble led to his appearance at the Haymarket on
the 10th of June 1805 as Sheepface in the _Village Lawyer_, and his
association with this theatre continued with few interruptions until
1830. _Paul Pry_, the most famous of all his impersonations, was first
presented on the 13th of September 1825, and soon became, thanks to his
creative genius, a real personage. Liston remained on the stage till
1837; during his last years his mind failed, and he died on the 22nd of
March 1846. He had married in 1807 Miss Tyrer (d. 1854), a singer and
actress.
Several pictures of Liston in character are in the Garrick Club,
London, and one as Paul Pry in the South Kensington Museum.