Joseph Lister

As a child Lister attended Benjamin Abbott's Isaac Brown Academy, a private[32] Quaker school in Hitchin in Hertfordshire.[33] When Lister was older he attended Grove House School in Tottenham, also a private Quaker School,[33] studying mathematics, natural science, and languages. His father was insistent that Lister received a good grounding in French and German, in the knowledge he would learn Latin at school.[34] From an early age, Lister was strongly encouraged by his father.[7] He became interested in natural history that led to dissections of small animals, fish and osteology, that were examined using his father's microscope[35] and then be drawn using the camera lucida technique that his father had taught him,[18] or sketched.[33] His father's interests in microscopical research, developed in Lister the determination to become a surgeon[35] and prepared him for a life of scientific research.[7]

Lister left school in the spring of 1844, when he was seventeen.[33] He was unable to attend either Oxford or the University of Cambridge owing to the religious tests that effectively barred him.[7] So he decided to apply to the non-sectarian University College London Medical School, one of only a few institutions in Great Britain that accepted Quakers at that time.[36]

school

The Lord Lister Hotel in Hitchin, formerly Benjamin Abbott's Isaac Brown Academy, where Lister was a student from 1838 to 1841

Grove House, a private quaker school in Tottenham, 1842.

---

The above file's purpose is being discussed and/or is being considered for deletion. See files for discussion to help reach a consensus on what to do.

Although his father wanted him to continue his general education,[37] the university had demanded since 1837, that each student obtain a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree before commencing medical training.[38] For his BA, Lister initially studied arts.[7] In December 1846, Lister was present at a famous operation by Robert Liston, who conducted an limb amputation on a patient, who had been anaesthetised using ether[39] by Lister's classmate, William Squire.[40]

In 1847, Lister graduated with a degree with a distinction in classics and botany.[7] While he was studying, Lister suffered from a bout of smallpox, a year after his elder brother died of the disease.[7] The bereavement combined with the stress of his classes led to a nervous breakdown.[7] Lister decided to take a long holiday in Ireland,[32] to recuperate and this delayed the start of his medical studies at the university[32] by more than a year.

In October 1848, Lister registered as a medical student.[32] While a student, Lister developed a lifelong interest in histology and experimental physiology.[7] During his studies, Lister was active in the University Debating Society and the Hospital Medical Society.[18]

In the autumn of 1849, he returned to college, bearing a gift of a microscope from his father.[39]

His main lecturers were John Lindley (1799–1865) professor of botany, Thomas Graham (1805–1869) professor of chemistry, Robert Edmond Grant (1793–1874) professor of comparative anatomy, George Viner Ellis (1812–1900) professor of anatomy and William Benjamin Carpenter (1813–1885) professor of medical jurisprudence.[32] Although Lister often spoke highly about Lindley and Graham in his writings, it was Wharton Jones (1808–1891) professor of ophthalmic medicine and surgery and William Sharpey (1802–1880) professor of physiology, who exercised the greatest influence on Lister.[32] As a student, Lister was greatly attracted by Dr. Sharpey's lectures, which inspired in him, a love of physiology that never left him.[41]

Wharton Jones was praised by Thomas Henry Huxley for the method and quality of his physiology lectures.[32] As a clinical scientist working in physiological sciences, he was foremost in the number of discoveries he made.[32] He was also considered a brilliant ophthalmic surgeon, his main field.[32] He conducted research into the circulation of the blood and phenomena of inflammation that was carried out on the frog's web and the bat's wing, and no doubt suggested this method of research to Lister.[32] Sharpey was called the father of modern physiology as he was the first to give a series of lectures on the subject.[32] Prior to that the field has been considered part of anatomy. [32] Sharpey studied at Edinbugh university, then went to Paris to study clinical surgery under the French anatomist Guillaume Dupuytren and operative surgery under Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin. It was in Paris that Sharpey met Syme and became life-long friends.[32] After moving to Edinburgh, he taught anatomy with Allen Thomson as his physiological colleague. He left Edinburgh in 1836, in order to become the first Professor of Physiology at University College, London[32]

The microscope given to Lister by his father J.J. Lister in 1849

Before he qualified for his degree, Lister had to undertake two years of clinical instruction.[38] He began as an intern and then house physician to Walter Hayle Walshe (1812–1892).[18] professor of pathological anatomy and author of 1846 study, The Nature and Treatment of Cancer.[42] Then in his second year in 1851, Lister became first a dresser in January 1851 [43] then a house surgeon to John Eric Erichsen (1818–1896) in May 1851.[39] Erichsen was professor of surgery[44] and author of the 1853 Science and Art of Surgery[45] described as one of the most celebrated textbooks on surgery in the English language.[43] The book went through many editions, of which Marcus Beck edited the eighth and ninth editions, adding Lister's antiseptic techniques and Pasteur and Robert Koch's germ theory.[46] It was while Lister worked for Erichsen, that his interest in the healing of wounds began.[44]

Lister had only just begun working in his role as dresser to Erichsen, when there was epidemic of erysipelas on the male ward.[47] An infected patient who came from an Islington workhouse was left in Erichsen's surgical ward for 2 hours.[47] The hospital had been free of infection but within days there were 12 cases of infection and 4 deaths.[47] In his notebook, Lister stated that the disease was a form of surgical fever, and particularly noted that recent surgical patients were infected the worst, but those with older operations with suppurating wounds, 'mostly escaped'.[47]

When he became a house surgeon, Lister had patients put in his charge.[43] For the first time, Lister came into contact face-to-face with the various forms of blood-poisoning diseases like pyaemia[48] and hospital gangarene, the disease that rots living tissue with a remarkable rapidity.[43] The method to effect a recovery was to chloroform the patient and burn the necrotic flesh away with caustic liquids.[43] Occasionally the treatment would be success but if a grey film appeared at the edge of the wound, then it presaged death.[43] Lister studied the epidemic by examining the diseased tissue under his microscope. He saw peculiar objects that he could not identify, as he had no frame of reference to draw conclusions from the observations.[43] In his notebook he recorded:

I imagined they might be the materies morbi in the form of some kind of fungus.[lower-alpha 1]

Lister wrote two papers on the epidemic, both were lost. The first paper was on Hospital gangarene [39] and the second was on the use of the Microscope. They were read to the Student Medical Society at UCL.[39]

On 26 June 2013, medical historian Ruth Richardson and orthopaedic surgeon Bryan Rhodes published a paper, in which they described their discovery of Lister's first operation, that they made while they were both researching his career.[39] At 1pm on 27 June 1851, Lister was a second-year medical student and working at a casualty ward in Gower Street, conducted his first operation. The operation was on Julia Sulivan, a mother of eight grown children. She had been stabbed in the abdomen by her husband, a drunk and ne'er-do-well, who was taken into custody.[49] On 15 September 1851, Lister was called as a witness to his trial at the Old Bailey.[49] His testimony helped convict the husband, who was transported to Australia for 20 years.[49]

Lister found the woman with a coil of intestine about eight inches across, consisting about a yard of the small intestines, that were damaged in two places, protruding from her lower abdomen. The abdomen itself contained three open wounds.[39] After cleaning the intestines with blood-warm water, Lister was unable to place them back into the body, so he took the decision to extend the cut.[39] They were then placed back in the body, the wounds sewn shut and the abdomen sutured.[39] The patient was administered opium to induce constipation, to enable the intestines to recover. Sulivan recovered her health.[39] It was a full decade before his first public operation in the Glasgow Infirmary.[39]

This operation was missed by historians.[39] Liverpool consultant surgeon John Shepherd, in his essay on Lister, Joseph Lister and abdominal surgery, written in 1968,[50] failed to mention the operation, instead starting his dates from the 1860s onwards. He apparently had no clue of what Lister accomplished.[39]

Lister wrote his first paper "Observations on the Contractile Tissue of the Iris"[51] while he was still at university. It was considered good enough[52] to be published in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science in 1853. On 11 August 1852, Lister was presented with piece of a fresh human iris by Wharton Jones, at the University College Hospital. Lister was present at the operation conducted by Jones[53] and took the rare opportunity to study the iris.[54] Lister reviewed the existing research, as well as studying tissue from a horse, a cat, a rabbit and a guinea-pig as well as taking six surgical specimens from patients who underwent a surgical operation on their eye.[15] Lister was unable to complete the research to his satisfaction, due to the need to pass his final examination. He offered an apology in the paper:

My engagements do not allow me to carry, the inquiry further at present; and my apology for offering the results of an incomplete investigation is that a contribution tending, in however small a degree, to extend our acquaintance with so important an organ as the eye, or to verify observations that may be thought doubtful, may probably be of interest to the physiologist.[52]

The paper advanced the work of Swisss physiologist Albert von Kölliker, demonstrating the existence of two distinct muscles, the dilator and sphincter in the iris,[35] that corrected the convictions of previous researchers that there was no dilator pupillae muscle.[15]

His next paper was an investigation into Goose bumps[55] in a paper titled, "Observations on the Muscular Tissue of the Skin",[56] was published on 1 June 1853, in the same journal.[57] Lister was able to confirm Kölliker's experimental studies, that in humans the smooth muscle fibres are responsible for the erectile function of hair, in contrast to other mammals in which large tactile hairs are associated with striated muscle.[15] Lister demonstrated a new method of creating histological sections from the tissue of the scalp.[57][58]

Lister's microscopy skills were so advanced that he was able to correct the observations of German histologist, Friedrich Gustav Henle, who mistook small blood vessels for muscle fibres.[15] In each of the papers, he created camera lucida drawings that were so accurate, they could be used to scale and measure the observations.[57]

Both papers attracted significant attention both in Britain and abroad.[58] The naturalist Richard Owen, who was an old friend of Lister's father was particularly impressed by both papers.[58] Owen contemplated recruiting Lister for his own department and forwarded him a thank-you letter on 2 August 1853.[58] Kölliker was particularly pleased at the analysis that Lister had formulated. Kölliker who made many trips to Britain, would eventually meet Lister and became life-long friends.[58] Their close frienship was described in a letter sent by Kölliker on 17 November 1897, that Rickman Godlee choose to use to illustrate their relationship.[59] Kölliker sent a letter to Lister, when he was president of the Royal Society, congratulating Lister on receiving the Copley medal and fondly remembered his old friends who had died and celebrated his time in Scotland while with Syme and Lister.[59] Kölliker was 80 years old at the time. [59]

Lister graduated with Bachelor of Medicine with honours, in the autumn 1852.[60] During his final year, Lister won several prestigious awards, that were heavily contested among the student body of the London teaching hospitals.[61] He won the Longridge Prize

For the greatest proficiency evinced during the three years immediately preceding, on the Sessional Examinations for Honours in the classes of the Faculty of Medicine of the College; and for creditable performance of duties of offices at the Hospital

that included a £40 stipend.[61] He was also awarded a gold medals in Structural and Physiological Botany.[61][62] Lister obtained two of the four available gold medals in Anatomy and Physiology as well as surgery, that came with a medal scholarship of £50 a year, for two years, for his second examination in medicine.[61] In the same year, Lister passed the examination for the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons,[60] bringing to a close nine years of education.[60]

With his medical education completed, Sharpey advised Lister to spend a month at the medical practice of his lifelong friend James Syme in Edinburgh and then visit medical schools in Europe for a longer period for training.[63] Sharpey himself had been taught first in Edinburgh and later Paris. Sharpey had met Syme, a teacher of clinical surgery, who was widely considered the best surgeon in the United Kingdom[64] while he was in Paris.[65] Sharpey had gone north to Edinburgh in 1818,[66] along with many other surgeons since, due to the influence of John Hunter. [64] Hunter had taught Edward Jenner who is seen as the first surgeon to take a scientific approach to the study of medicine, that was known as the Hunterian method[67] Hunter was an early advocate for careful investigation and experimentation,[68] using the techniques of pathology and physiology to give himself a better understanding of healing than many of his colleagues.[64] For example, his 1794 paper, A treatise on the blood, inflammation and gun-shot wounds[68] was the first systematic study of swelling,[64] discovering that inflammation was common to all diseases.[69] Due to Hunter, surgery was raised from a job then practiced by hobbyists or amateurs into a true scientific profession.[64] As the Scottish universities taught medicine and surgery from a scientific viewpoint, surgeons who wished to emulate those techniques travelled north for training.[70] Scottish universities had several other features that distinguished them from the medical universities in the south.[71] They were inexpensive and didn't require religious admissions tests, attracting the most scientifically progressive students in Britain.[71] The most important differentiator, was that medical schools in Scotland had evolved from a scholarly tradition, where English medical schools relied on hospitals and practice.[71] Experimental science had no practitioners at English medical schools and while Edinburgh University medical school was large and active at the time, southern medical schools were generally moribund, their laboratory space and teaching materials being inadequate.[71] English medical schools tended to view surgery as manual labour, not a respectable calling for a gentleman academic.[71]

Lister's lecturers

Wharton Jones

William Sharpey

John Lindley

Thomas Graham

Robert Grant

William Carpenter

On 7 November 1855, Lister gave his first extramural lecture on the "Principles and Practice of Surgery", in a lecture theatre at 4 High School Yards.[90] His first lecture was read from 21 pages of foolscap folio.[91] Lister's first lectures were based on notes, either read or spoken, but over time he used them less and less [92] becoming extempore in his speech, slowly and deliberately forming his argument as he went along.[93] By this deliberate way of speaking, he managed to overcome a slight, occasional stammer which, in his early days, had been more troublesome.[93]

His first student was Batty Tuke, at the time, an anatomy demonstrator for John Goodsir [92] in a class of nine or ten, mostly consisting of dressers.[91] Within a week, twenty-three people had joined.[91] The lecture theatre was always referred to as Old Jerusalem and was directly located across from the Infirmary gates.[92] In the next year, only eight folk turned up. A year later, Lister had the ignominious experience of reading his lecture to a single student, who arrived ten minutes late. Seven more students arrived later.[94]

In August 1855, Lister became engaged to Agnes Syme.[18] During that time, when a Quaker married a person of another denomination, it would be considered as marrying out of the society.[87] After sending a letter to his parents, Lister made up his mind and subsequently left the Quakers to become a protestant, later joining the congregation of the Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, in Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh.[95] On 23 April 1856, Lister married Agnes Syme in the drawing room of Millbank, Syme's house in Morningside.[96] Only the Syme family were present.[97]

On their honeymoon, the couple spent a month at Upton and the Lake District,[96] followed by three months on a tour of the leading medical institutes in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.[98] The couple returned in October 1856.[99] By this time, Agnes was enamoured of medical research and became Lister's partner in the laboratory for the rest of her life.[97] When they returned to Edinburgh, the couple moved into a rented house at 11 Rutland Street in Edinburgh.[99] The Scottish surgeon Watson Cheyne, who was almost a surrogate son to Lister, stated after his death that Agnes had entered into his work wholeheartedly, had been his only secretary, and that they discussed his work on an almost equal footing.[47] Lister's books are full of Agnes careful handwriting.[47] Agnes would take dictation from Lister, taken at hours at a stretch. Spaces would be left blank amongst the reams of Agnes' handwriting for small diagrams, that Lister would create using the camera lucida technique and Agnes would later paste in.[47]

Lister's family

James Syme, circa 1855

Photogravure of Agnes "Aggie" Syme, taken by Sir Emery Walker

While he was in Edinburgh, Lister conducted a series of physiological experiments between the years 1853 and 1859.[15] His approach was rigorous and meticulous in both measurement and description.[15] Lister was clearly aware of the latest advances of physiological research in France, Germany, and other European countries[7] and maintained an on-going discussion of his observations and results with other leading physicians in his peer group including Albert von Kölliker, Wilhelm von Wittich, Theodor Schwann, and Rudolf Virchow[15] and ensured he correctly cited their work.

These experiments resulted in the publication of 11 papers between 1857 and 1859.[15] They included the study of the nervous control of arteries, the earliest stages of inflammation, the structure of nerve fibres, and the study of the nervous control of the gut with reference to sympathetic nerves.[15] He continued the experiments for three years, until he was appointed Regius Professor of Systematic Surgery at the University of Glasgow.[100] Throughout his life, Lister believed that the papers on microscopy and physiology of inflammation that he read to the Royal Society in 1857, were his most important.[15]

In a letter of 16 December 1855, Lister recorded the beginnings of his research to trace the process of inflammation.[101] He describes an experiment on the artery of a frog viewed under his microscope, which was subjected to a water droplet of differing temperatures, to determine the early stage of inflammation.[102] He initially applied a water droplet at 80 °F which caused the artery to contract for a second and the flow ceased, then dilated and the area turned red and the flow of blood increased.[103] He progressively increased the temperature until it was 200 °F. The blood slowed down then coagulated.[103] He continued the experiment on the wing of chloroformed bat to widen his research focus.[104]

Lister's family

Frog's foot specimen prepared by Joseph Lister, 1857

Lister's third paper, "On the minute structure of involuntary muscle fibre",[105] published in 1858 in the same journal, was read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 1 December 1856.[105] It was research into the histology and function of the minute structures of involuntary muscle fibres.[15] The experiment was designed to confirm Kölliker's observations on the structure of individual fibres.[15] Lister proved conclusively that the muscle fibres of blood vessels, described by Lister as slightly flattened elongated elements, were similar to those found in pig intestine, that Kölliker observed.[105]

His next paper, "On the flow of the lacteal fluid in the mesentery of the mouse", was a short report, based on observations that he made in 1853.[106] The experiment by Lister was to prove two goals:[59] firstly to determine the character of the flow of chyle in the lymphatics and secondly, to determine if the Lacteals in the gastrointestinal wall could absorb solid matter, in the form of granules, from the lumen.[15] For the first experiment. a mouse fed beforehand on bread and milk was chloroformed, its abdomen opened and a length of intestine placed on glass under a microscope.[59] Lister repeated the experiment several times and each time saw mesenteric lymph flowing in a steady stream, without visible contractions of the lymph vessels. For the second experiment Lister dyed some bread with indigo dye and fed it to a mouse, with the result that no indigo particles were ever seen in the chyle.[107] Lister delivered the paper to the 27th meeting of the British Medical Association, that was held in Dublin between 26 August to 2 September 1857.[108] The paper was formally published in 1858 in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science.[109]

In 1858, Lister published seven papers on physiological experiments he conducted on the origin and mechanism of inflammation.[15] Two of these papers were research into the nervous control of blood vessels, "An Inquiry Regarding the Parts of the Nervous System Which Regulate the Contractions of the Arteries" and the principal paper in the series "On the Early Stages of Inflammation" which extended the work of Wharton Jones.[15] Both papers were read to the Royal Society of London on 18 June 1857.[110][15]

The first of these experiments described in the paper "An Inquiry..." were designed to satisfy a contemporary dispute between physiologists, concerning the origin of the influence exercised over blood vessel diameter (calibre) by the sympathetic nervous system.[15] The dispute started when Albrecht von Haller formulated a new theory known as Sensibility and Irritability in his 1752 thesis De partibus corporis humani sensibilibus et irritabilibus.

The dispute had been debated since the middle of the 18th century and even as late as 1853, highly respected textbooks, for example William Benjamin Carpenter Principles of Human Physiology stated the doctrine of 'irritability' was a fact beyond dispute.[111] and was still considered contentious when John Hughes Bennett created the Physiology article for the 8th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica in 1859.[112]

In his experiments that he started in the autumn of 1856, Lister examined the diameter of blood vessels in a frogs web[lower-alpha 2] with an ocular micrometer, before and after the ablation of parts of the central nervous system[113] and also before and after with the splitting of the sciatic nerve.[114][15] Lister concluded that blood vessel tone[lower-alpha 3] was controlled by the medulla oblongata and the spinal cord[116] and refuted Wharton's conclusions, in his paper Observations on the State of the Blood and the Blood-Vessels in Inflammation[117] who was not able to confirm that the control of blood vessels of the hind legs was dependent upon spinal centres.[118]

Lister had come to the conclusion that accurate knowledge of the functioning of inflammation could not be obtained by researching the more advanced stages that were subject to secondary processes.[119] The paper was divided into four sections:

• The aggregation of red blood cells when removed from the body, i.e., which occurs during coagulation.[119]
• The structure and function of blood vessels.[120]
• The effects of irritants on blood vessels, e.g., hot water.[120]
• The effects of irritants on tissue.[120]

Louis Pasteur in his laboratory

In the spring of 1865,[127] while out walking with Thomas Anderson,[128] professor of chemistry at Glasgow, Anderson introduced Lister to the work of the French chemist, Louis Pasteur.[129] At that time Lister wasn't a wide reader of continental literature.[129] Five of the papers that Pasteur published between 1857 and 1863 would directly influence Lister's work on microorganisms.[130]

Lister read about Louis Pasteur's discovery of living things causing fermentation and putrefaction in the journal Comptes rendus hebdomadaires of the French Academy of Sciences.[131]

The first paper that piqued Listers interest was the Mémoire sur la fermentation appelée lactique (Extrait par l'auteur) (Memoir on the so-called lactic acid fermentation (Extracted by the author)) published in 1857.[132]

The second paper was the Memoire sur la Fermentation Alcoolique (Memoir on Alcoholic Fermentation) that was published in Annales de chimie et de physique in 1860.[133] Pasteur described the living beings, microorganisms in yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae that were responsible for effervescent change that leads to fermentation.[134]

The third paper by Pasteur was the Animalcules infusoires vivant sans gaz oxygène libre et déterminant des fermentations, (Animal Infusoria Living in the Absence of Free Oxygen and their fermentations)[135] The paper, that was presented in 1986, was seminal in enabling Lister to understand Sepsis,[134] where the bodies response to infections leads to injury in the tissue and organs. Pasteur's research led him to believe the ferment that produced Butyric acid was a microbe that lived in the absence of oxygen.[134]

The fourth paper that infleunced Lister was the Sur les corpuscules organisés qui existent dans l'atmosphère, examen de la doctrine des générations spontanées 1861 (On the organized particles that exist in the atmosphere, examination of the doctrine of spontaneous generations)[136] In this paper, Pasteur destroyed the theory of spontaneous generation. He tested the hypothesis that life in boiled infusions arose from spores.[134] He also proved that particles in the air could be cultivated; and if they were introduced from the air, into a sterile liquid, they would reappear and multiply in the liquid.[130]

The fifth paper that was important to Lister, was Pasteur's magnus opus, called the Examen du rôle attribué au gaz oxygène atmosphérique dans la destruction des matières animales et végétales après la mort 1863 (Examination of the role attributed to atmospheric oxygen gas in the destruction of animal and plant matter after death).[137] The paper showed that fermination, putrefaction and slow combustion destroyed organic matter and these were necessary processes for life to exist.[134] Pasteur learned that slow combustion was related to the anaerobic conditions that were presnt, if microorganisms were present.[134]

The discovery was serendipitous, as he read them during the time that he was struggling to control post-surgical infections.[138]

As Lister studied the paper, he realised that they provided the explanation which he sought.[128] He was now convinced that infection and suppuration of wounds must be due to entry into the wound of minute living airborne creatures.[128] He recognised that contamination was the vector for infection, realising from the first that the surgeons hands, dressings and instruments would also be contaminated.[128] However, Pasteur's work could only confirm the view, which Lister had always expressed that contamination came from the air. Lister didn't realise that it was not the air but the vast number of different microbic life that was responsible.[128] As Lister's work at that time was derived directly from Pasteur's work, Lister probably thought that infection of the wound was due to a single organism. He had no conception, nor indeed did anybody else of the vast number of types of germs that existed.[139] The realisation that occurred after reading the papers, spurred him to determine how the hands, dressings and instruments he used could be rid of these ubiquitous organisms and how the wound could be cleared of them.[139]

Pasteur suggested three methods to eliminate the micro-organisms: filtration, exposure to heat, or exposure to solution/chemical solutions. As the first two methods suggested by Pasteur were unsuitable for the treatment of human tissue, Lister experimented with the third idea.[136][137] Lister was particularly interested in the efficacy of filtration and repeated many of Pasteur experiments for instruction in his class.[139]

Lister confirmed Pasteur's conclusions with his own experiments and decided to use his findings to develop antiseptic techniques for wounds.[140]

In 1834, Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge discovered phenol, also known as carbolic acid, which he derived in an impure form from coal tar. At that time, there was uncertainty between the substance of creosote – a chemical that had been used to treat wood used for railway ties and ships since it protected the wood from rotting – and carbolic acid.[141] Upon hearing that creosote had been used for treating sewage, Lister began to test the efficacy of carbolic acid when applied directly to wounds.[142]

Therefore, Lister tested the results of spraying instruments, the surgical incisions, and dressings with a solution of carbolic acid. Lister found that the solution swabbed on wounds remarkably reduced the incidence of gangrene.[143]

The history of antiseptic surgery in the years before 1847, was preventing or treating infection in accidental wounds, often received in battle. [145]

On 12 August 1865, Lister achieved success for the first time when he used full-strength carbolic acid to disinfect a compound fracture.[146][147] He applied a piece of lint dipped in carbolic acid solution onto the wound of an 11-year-old boy, James Greenlees, who had sustained a compound fracture after a cart wheel had passed over his leg.[148] After four days, he renewed the pad and discovered that no infection had developed, and after a total of six weeks he was amazed to discover that the boy's bones had fused back together, without suppuration. He subsequently published his results in The Lancet in a series of six articles, running from March through July 1867.[149][150][9] Before the publication of these articles, the French doctor Jules Lemaire, in a book from 1863 reprinted in 1865, had already pointed out the antiseptic power of carbolic acid.[151] On 21 September 1867, in the Edinburgh Daily Review, James Young Simpson (using a pseudonym) expressed the idea that Lister's last article was misleading, as it "attribute[d] the first surgical employment of carbolic acid to Professor Lister". Simpson then mentioned Lemaire's work.[152]

Lister instructed surgeons under his responsibility to wear clean gloves and wash their hands before and after operations with five per cent carbolic acid solutions. Instruments were also washed in the same solution and assistants sprayed the solution in the operating theatre. One of his additional suggestions was to stop using porous natural materials in manufacturing the handles of medical instruments.[153]

Lister left Glasgow University in 1869 and was succeeded by George Husband Baird MacLeod.[154] Lister then returned to Edinburgh as successor to Syme as Professor of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh and continued to develop improved methods of antisepsis and asepsis. Amongst those he worked with there, who helped him and his work, was the senior apothecary and later MD, Alexander Gunn.[155] Lister's fame had spread by then, and audiences of 400 often came to hear him lecture. As the germ theory of disease became more understood, it was realised that infection could be better avoided by preventing bacteria from getting into wounds in the first place. This led to the rise of aseptic surgery. On the hundredth anniversary of his death, in 2012, Lister was considered by most in the medical field as "the father of modern surgery".[142]

Although Lister was so roundly honoured in later life, his ideas about the transmission of infection and the use of antiseptics were widely criticised in his early career.[9] In 1869, at the meetings of the British Association at Leeds, Lister's ideas were mocked; and again, in 1873, the medical journal The Lancet warned the entire medical profession against his progressive ideas.[156] However, Lister did have some supporters including Marcus Beck, a consultant surgeon at University College Hospital, who not only practiced Lister's antiseptic technique, but included it in the next edition of one of the main surgical textbooks of the time.[157][158]

Lister's use of carbolic acid proved problematic, and he eventually repudiated it for superior methods. The spray irritated eyes and respiratory tracts, and the soaked bandages were suspected of damaging tissue, so his teachings and methods were not always adopted in their entirety.[159] Because his ideas were based on germ theory, which was in its infancy, their adoption was slow.[160] General criticism of his methods was exacerbated by the fact that he found it hard to express himself adequately in writing, so they seemed complicated, unorganised, and impractical.[161]

On 11 September 1877, Joseph and Aggie moved to London[170] and the couple found a house at 12 Park Crescent, Regent's Park.[171] Lister began teaching on the first day of October.[170] The hospital made it mandatory that all students should attend Lister's lecturers.[170] Attendance was small compared to the four hundred who would regularly attend his classes in Edinburgh.[170] Lister's conditions of employment were met, but he was only provided with 24 beds, instead of the 60 beds that he was used to in Edinburgh.[172] Lister stipulated that he should be able to bring from Edinburgh four people who would constitute the core of his new staff at the hospital.[173] These were Watson Cheyne who became his assistant surgeon, John Stewart, an anatomical artist and senior assistant, along with W. H. Dobie and James Altham who were Lister's dressers (surgical assistants who dressed wounds).[173] There was considerable friction at Lister's first lecture, both from students who heckled him[172] and staff. Even the nurses were hostile.[173] This was clearly illustrated in October 1877[174] when a patient, Lizzie Thomas, who travelled from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary to be treated for a Psoas abscess, was not admitted due to not having the correct paperwork.[175] Lister could hardly believe that such a lack of sympathy from imperious nurses could exist.[176] More so, such a state of mind was a real danger to his patients, as it depended on loyal staff to carry out the preparations required for antiseptic surgery.[176]

On 1 October 1877, Lister held the customary introductory address, in essence his inaugural lecture in London, with the subject, "The nature of fermentation".[177] Lister described the fermentation of milk and explained how putrefaction was caused by fermentation of blood[178] and, in the process, tried to prove that all fermentation was due to microorganisms. For his demonstration he used a series of test tubes containing milk that were loosely covered with glass caps.[164] Although air had entered the test tubes and the milk had not decomposed demonstrated that air was responsible for fermentation.[164] The experiment had two conclusions, first that unboiled milk had no tendency to ferment and secondly that a organism that Lister had isolated,[179] Bacterium lactis was the cause of lactic acid fermentation.[164]

The address was badly received.[172] In defence, John Stewart described it as: "...a brilliant and most hopeful beginning of what we regarded as a campaign in the enemy's country... There seemed to be a colossal apathy, an inconceivable indifference to the light which, to our minds, shone so brightly, a monstrous inertia to the force of new ideas."[180]

In October 1877, Lister performed an operation on a patient, Francis Smith, that wasn't considered life-threatening.[181][182] The open operation on a broken patella (kneecap), in front of 200 students involved wiring the two fragments together.[182]

In 1881 Lister was elected President of the Clinical Society of London.[183]

He also developed a method of repairing kneecaps with metal wire and improved the technique of mastectomy. He was also known for being the first surgeon to use catgut ligatures, sutures, and rubber drains, and developing an aortic tourniquet.[184][7] He also introduced a diluted spray of carbolic acid combined with its surgical use, however he abandoned the carbolic acid sprays in the late 1890s after he saw it provided no beneficial change in the outcomes of the surgeries performed with the carbolic acid spray. The only reported reactions were minor symptoms that did not affect the surgical outcome as a whole, like coughing, irritation of the eye, and minor tissue damage among his patients who were exposed to the carbolic acid sprays during the surgery.[185]

The first use of Listers method in Germany was by Karl Thiersch in Leipzig in 1867.[187] Thiersch who practiced Listers since its introduction, never published his result's but taught Listers methods to his students.[187] His house surgeon Hermann Georg Joseph, tested it on 16 patients who had abscesses, with favourable results.[186] Joseph wrote a thesis on the results that proved the value of Lister method, that was presented in Leipzing the following year.[188] In January 1870, Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben presented a paper to the Berlin Medical Society that described the results but provided no statistical evaluation of those results.[188]

The adoption of Listerism on the European continent was halted during Franco-Prussian War but it became the greatest opportunity to advance Listers ideas.[186] At the start of the war, Lister had written a pamphlet known as "A Method of Antiseptic Treatment Applicable To Wounded Soldiers in the Present War" that described a simplified technique of antiseptic that could be used on the battlefield and military hospital.[189] The pamphlet was immediately translated into German, however it never made a material difference.[188]

By far the most important advocate for Lister's antiseptic system in Germany was the surgeon and Osteotomy specialist,[190] Richard von Volkmann (1830–1889) who taught at the University of Halle.[191][192] In August 1870, he became surgeon-general during the Franco-Prussian War and was responsible for 12 army hospitals and 1442 beds.[192] When he returned to his own hospital in the winter of 1871, he found large numbers of patients with infectious diseases throughout the ward.[192] He wrote of the experience:

"The mortality after large amputations and complicated fractures grew year by year. In the summer of 1871, during my absence on the battlefield, the clinic was crowded by a large amount of injured. For eight months, in the winter 1871 to 1872, the numbers of blood poisoning and rose disease victims were so great, that I considered applying for a temporary closure of the facility. Without a morgue, the dead stayed in the cellar beneath the wards"

In 1872, Volkmann sent his assistant Max Schede (1844–1902) to visit Lister at his clinic, to learn his new techniques.[192] Once Schede returned in the autumn of 1872, Volkmann began to use Listers new techniques.[192] On 16 Feb 1873, in a letter to Theodor Billroth, Volkmann wrote:

"... since autumn of last year (1872), I have been experimenting with Lister’s method…. Already, the first trials in the old ‘contaminated’ house, show wounds healing, uneventful, without fever and pus".[192]

In April 1874, Volkmann presented a lecturer with the title: "About antiseptic occlusive bandages and their influence on the healing process of wounds" where he detailed influence of Lister.[192] The lecture became famous in Germany to such an extent that Listers antiseptics was established in Germany, faster than any other developed country. At the German Congress of Surgery, the members was so enthused with the results of Listers work, that they invited him to visit Germany and see first hand the results of his work.[193] Lister decided to accept the invitation of a continental tour.[194]

In the spring of 1875, Lister along with Agnes, his sister-in-law and two nieces left Edinburgh.[194] The group spent several weeks in a tour that began in Cannes in France, followed by boating expedition to the Lérins Islands, followed by a visit to Metz. They then drove to La Spezia in Italy, then Pisa and Naples, then on to Capri followed by Naples, Rome, Florence, Milan and a four-day visit to Venice.[194] The first place in Germany that Lister visited was the "Allgeimeines Krankenhaus" (general hospital) in Munich that was run by Nussbaum.[195] A celebratory dinner was held in Munich for Lister, with seventy guests.[193] However, it was in Leipzig where Lister received his most glorious reception. A banquet was held with between three and four-hundred guests present that was led by the MC Karl Thiersch.[193] Lister then visited Volkmann in Halle before visiting Berlin where the group was entertained by Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben, who worked at the Charité hospital and was one of earliest adopters of Listers methods.[188]

Lord Lister died on 10 February 1912 at his country home at the age of 84.[207] The first part of Lister's funeral was a large public service was held at Westminster Abbey that took place on 1.30pm on 16 February 1912.[208] His body was moved from his house and taken to The Chapel of St. Faith and a wreath of orchids and lillies was placed by the German ambassador Count Paul Wolff Metternich on behalf of the German Emperor Wilhelm II.[208] Before the start of the service, Frederick Bridge played the music of Henry Purcell, the funeral march by Chopin and Beethoven's Tres Aequili.[208] The body was then placed on a high catafalque, where his Order of Merit, Prussian Pour le Mérite and Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog was placed.[208] It was then borne by several pollbearer's including John William Strutt, Archibald Primrose, Rupert Guinness, Archibald Geikie, Donald MacAlister, Watson Cheyne, Godlee and Francis Mitchell Caird[208] where the catafalque was conveyed to Hampstead Cemetery in London[207] reaching it at 4pm.[208] Lister's body was then buried in a plot in the south-east corner of central chapel, attended by a small group of his family and friends. Many tributes for learned societies all over the world that were published in The Times on that day.[208] A memorial service was held in St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh on the same day.[208] Glasgow University held a memorial service in Bute Hall on 15 February 1912.[208]

In the north transept of Westminster Abbey, there is a marble medallion of Lister that sits alongside four other noted men of science, Darwin, Stokes, Adams, and Watt.[207]

Lister was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England between 1880 and 1888. In 1886, he was elected vice president of the college, but declined the nomination for office of president, as he wished to devote his remaining time to further research.[220] In 1887, Lister presented the Bradshaw lecture with a lecture titled "On the Present Position of Antiseptic Treatment in Surgery".[18] In 1897, Lister was awarded the College Gold Medal, their highest honour.[18]

Lister was elected to the Royal Society in 1860.[18] In 1863, Lister presented the Croonian Lecture[221] at the society, "On the Coagulation of the Blood".[222] He served as a trustee on the Royal Society council between 1881 and 1883.[18] Ten years later, in November 1893 Lister was elected for two years, to the position of foreign secretary of the society, succeeding the Scottish geologist Sir Archibald Geikie.[223] In 1895, he was elected president of the Royal Society[224] succeeding Lord Kelvin. He held the position until 1900.[18]

In March 1893, Lister received a telegram from Pasteur, Félix Guyon and Charles Bouchard that informed him he had been elected an associate of the Academie des Sciences.[225]

Following his death, the Lord Lister Memorial Fund was established, a public subscription to raise monies for the public good in honour of Lord Lister.[226] It led to the founding of the Lister Medal, considered the most prestigious prize that can be awarded to a surgeon.

In 1903, the British Institute of Preventive Medicine was renamed Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in honour of Lister.[227] The building, along with another adjacent building, forms what is now the Lister Hospital in Chelsea, which opened in 1985. The building at Glasgow Royal Infirmary which houses the cytopathology, microbiology, and pathology departments was named in Lister's honour to recognise his work at the hospital.[228] The Lister Hospital in Stevenage, Hertfordshire is named after him.[229]

Lister's name is one of 23 names featured on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine[230] – although the committee which chose the names to include on the frieze did not provide documentation about why certain names were chosen and others were not.[231]

Lister is one of only two surgeons in the United Kingdom who have the honour of having a public monument in London, Lister and John Hunter. The statue of Lister, created by Thomas Brock in bronze in 1924, stands at the north end of Portland Place.[232] There is a bronze statue of Lister, mounted on a granite base in Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow that was sculpted by George Henry Paulin in 1924. It sits next to the statue of Lord Kelvin.[233]

The Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904 named the highest point in the Royal Society Range, Antarctica, Mount Lister.[234]

In 1879, Listerine antiseptic (developed as a surgical antiseptic but nowadays best known as a mouthwash) was named by its American inventor, Joseph Lawrence, to honour Lister.[235]

Microorganisms named in his honour include the pathogenic bacterial genus Listeria named by J. H. H. Pirie, typified by the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes, as well as the slime mould genus Listerella, first described by Eduard Adolf Wilhelm Jahn in 1906.[236]

Lister is depicted in the Academy Award-winning 1936 film The Story of Louis Pasteur, by Halliwell Hobbes. In the film, Lister is one of the beleaguered microbiologist's most noted supporters in the otherwise largely hostile medical community, and is the key speaker in the ceremony in his honour.

Two postage stamps were issued in September 1965 to honour Lister on the centenary of his antiseptic surgery at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary of Greenlees, the first ever recorded instance of such treatment.[237]

These are some of Lister's most important papers:

• Lister, Joseph (1 January 1853). "Observations on the Contractile Tissue of the Iris". Journal of Cell Science. s1-1 (1): 8–17. doi:10.1242/jcs.s1-1.1.8.
• Lister, Joseph (1853). "Observations on the Muscular Tissue of the Skin". Journal of Cell Science. The Company of Biologists Ltd. s1-1 (4): 262–268. doi:10.1242/jcs.s1-1.4.262. ISSN 0021-9533. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
• Lister, Joseph (January 1858). "On the Minute Structure of Involuntary Muscular Fibre". Journal of Cell Science. s1–6 (21): 5–14. doi:10.1242/jcs.s1-6.21.5 (inactive 28 February 2022). ISSN 0021-9533.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of February 2022 (link)
• Lister, Joseph (1 January 1858). "Proceedings of Societies: Observations on the Flow of the Lacteal Fluid in the Mesentery of the Mouse". Journal of Cell Science. s1–6 (21): 81–82. doi:10.1242/jcs.s1-6.21.81b. ISSN 1477-9137.
• Lister, Joseph (1858). "An Inquiry Regarding the Parts of the Nervous System Which Regulate the Contractions of the Arteries". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Royal Society. 148: 607–625. Bibcode:1858RSPT..148..607L. JSTOR 108676.
• Lister, Joseph (31 December 1858). "XXIX. An inquiry regarding the parts of the nervous system which regulate the contractions of the arteries". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 148: 607–625. doi:10.1098/rstl.1858.0029. S2CID 109596725.
• Lister, Joseph (31 December 1858). "On the early stages of inflammations". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Royal Society. 148: 645–702. ISSN 0261-0523. JSTOR 108678.
• Lister, Joseph (21 September 1867). "On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery". BMJ. 2 (351): 246–248. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.351.246. PMC 2310614. PMID 20744875.
• Lister, Joseph (March 1867). "On a New Method of Treating Compound Fracture, Abscess, etc., with Observations on the Conditions of Suppuration". The Lancet. 89 (2272): 326–329. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)51192-2.
• Lister, J (January 1870). "On the Effects of the Antiseptic System of Treatment Upon the Salubrity of a Surgical Hospital". The Lancet. 95 (2418): 4–6. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)31273-X.
• Lister, Barron Joseph (1878). On the lactic fermentation and its bearings on pathology. London: J.E. Adlard. OCLC 30715167.

• Lister, Joseph (6 October 1900). "The Huxley Lecture". BMJ. 2 (2075): 969–977. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.2075.969. PMC 2463910. PMID 20759189.

Two quarto volumes of Lister's collected papers, that were prepared by Sir Hector Charles Cameron, Sir W. Watson Cheyne, Rickman J. Godlee and C. J. Martin, Dawson Williams:

• Baron Joseph, Lister; Cameron, Hector Clare (1909). The collected papers of Joseph Baron Lister. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press, Hodder and Stoughton. OCLC 838259550.
• Baron Joseph, Lister; Cameron, Hector Clare (1909). The collected papers of Joseph Baron Lister. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press, Hodder and Stoughton. OCLC 841851608.

• Lister, J. (6 October 1877). "Introductory Address Delivered in the Medical Department of King's College". BMJ. 2 (875): 465–469. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.875.465. PMC 2221161. PMID 20748639. Introductory Address Delivered in the Medical Department of King's College

• Pasteur, Louis (19 May 1861). Sur les corpuscules organisés qui existent dans l'atmosphère, examen de la doctrine des générations spontanées (in French). Paris: Society of Chemists of Paris. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
• Pasteur, Lister (June 1863). "Examen du rôle attribué au gaz oxygène atmosphérique dans la destruction des matières animales et végétales après la mort". COMPTES RENDUS DES SÉANCES DE L'ACADÉMIÉ DES SCIENCES. TABLES ALPHABÉTIQUES. paris: Académie des sciences. pp. 734–740. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
• Pasteur, Louis (1863). "Recherches sur la putréfaction". Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences (in French). French Academy of Sciences. 56: 1189–1194.

• Best, A. E. (January 1970). "Reflections on Joseph Lister's Edinburgh Experiments on Vaso-Motor Control". Medical History. 14 (1): 10–30. doi:10.1017/S0025727300015106. PMC 1034011. PMID 4904726.
• Richardson, Ruth; Rhodes, Bryan (20 December 2013). "Joseph Lister's first operation". Notes and Records of the Royal Society. 67 (4): 375–385. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2013.0033. S2CID 71289054.

Article on the 1877 lecture:

• Richardson, Ruth (20 September 2013). "Inflammation, suppuration, putrefaction, fermentation: Joseph Lister's microbiology". Notes and Records of the Royal Society. 67 (3): 211–229. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2013.0034. S2CID 73323223.

Article on Lister rolls:

• King, Louise (1 November 2011). "The Lecture Rolls of Sir Joseph Lister". The Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 93 (10): 369. doi:10.1308/147363511X13158258989956.

Article on Lister collection at the Royal Collection of Surgeons

• Alberti, Sam (1 March 2012). "Saints and Sinners: Joseph Lister". The Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 94 (3): 90–91. doi:10.1308/147363512X13189526440393.