Excerpt from Surgery and Society: A Tribute to Listerism It was with astonishment and incredulity, some years ago, when planning my New Library of Medi cines, that I failed to discover any existing book devoted to this subject, of which the importance in creases daily as the powers of the surgeon become more extended. One knew that such questions as Infant Mortality and the Prevention of Tuberculosis and the Hygiene of Mind had never been properly dealt with in any organic and complete manner, either for the public or the profession. Surprising though these lacuna) were, they could be understood, for the daily preventable slaughter of infants had to wait for attention until the development of what may be called the Public Health Conscience in the community - and that is scarcely yet a stripling; and, similarly, the prevention of tuberculosis could not be dealt with until the discovery of the tubercle bacillus and its modes of transference from the sick to the sound. But though the books of Sir George Newman and Dr. Newsholme and Sir Thomas Clouston should doubtless have been written long be fore, they were not nearly so overdue as a volume on Modern Surgery, its history, its powers, and its place in the State; for, after all, however inadequate the public consciousness of the fact, this mighty deed, to which we are one and all at this hour incalculably indebted, dates as far back as the later sixties of the nineteenth century for its essential doing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.