or bringing with him some of the men whom he had
trained, and he was accompanied by four Edinburgh surgeons, the foremost
of whom were John Stewart, a Canadian, and Watson Cheyne, the famous
operator of the next generation. Even so he found his orders set at
naught and his work hampered by a temper which he had never known
elsewhere. In some cases the sisters entrenched themselves behind the
Secretary's rules and refused to comply, not only with the requests of
the new staff, but even with the dictates of common sense and humanity.
Another trouble arose over the system of London examinations which
tempted the students to reproduce faithfully the views of others and
discouraged men from giving time to independent research. Lister's
method of lecturing was designed to foster the spirit of inquiry, and he
would not deign to fill his lecture-room by any species of 'cramming'.
Never did his patience, his hopefulness, and his interest in the cause
have to submit to greater trials; but the day of victory was at hand.

The most visible sign of it was at the International Medical Congress
held at Amsterdam in 1879 and attended by representatives of the great
European nations. One sitting was devoted to the antiseptic system; and
Lister, after delivering an address, received an ovation so marked that
none of his fellow-countrymen could fail to see the esteem in which he
was held abroad. Even in London many of his rivals had by now been
converted. The most distinguished of them, Sir James Paget, openly
expressed remorse for his reluctance to accept the antiseptic principle
earlier, and compared his own record of failures with the successes
attained by his colleague at St. Bartholomew's Thomas Smith, the one
eminent London surgeon who had given Listerism a thorough trial. Other
triumphs followed, such as the visits in 1889 to Oxford and Cambridge to
receive Honorary Degrees, the offer of a baronetcy in 1883, and the
conferring on him in 1885 of the Prussian 'Ordre pour le merite'.[49]
But a chronicle of such external matters is wearisome in itself; and
before the climax was reached, the current of opinion was, by a strange
turn of fortune, already setting in another direction.

[Note 49: Restricted to thirty German and thirty foreign members.]

This was due to the introduction of the so-called aseptic theory so
widely prevalent to-day, of which the chief prophet in 1885 was
Professor von Bergmann of Berlin. Into the relative merit