ABSTRACT
From the standpoint of Preventive Medicine the most important event in my student life was the introduction of antiseptic surgery, and I had full opportunity of watching surgical work carried out by Listerian methods and corresponding work on old-fashioned lines. I can endorse the contrast between the two given recently (British Medical Journal, May 26, 1934) by an old fellow-student (now Sir Charles Ballance), that when he entered St. Thomas's very few operation wounds in the London hospitals healed by first intention, and that there was a general lack of surgical cleanliness in the operating theatre on the part of the surgeon and patient and their entire environment.
