“It is a perfect enigma to me,” he wrote to Lister, “that you can devote yourself to researches which demand so much care, time and incessant painstaking, at the same time as you devote yourself to the profession of surgery and to that of chief surgeon to a great hospital. I do not think that another instance of such a prodigy could be found amongst us here.” To Lister—a man who had always placed immense faith in the scientific method—this was as high a compliment as could be paid him, especially since it came from such a revered figure as Pasteur.
