Editing Joseph Lister (section)

===Medical student===
Lister registered as a medical student in the winter of 1849{{sfn|Fitzharris|2018|p=45}} and became active in the University Debating Society and the Hospital Medical Society.{{sfn|Plarr's|2008}} In the autumn of 1849, he returned to college with a [[microscope]] given to him by his father.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} After completing courses in anatomy, physiology and surgery, he was awarded a "Certificate of Honours", winning the silver medal in anatomy and physiology and a gold medal in botany.{{sfn|Lister|1859a|p=26}}

His main lecturers were [[John Lindley]] professor of [[botany]], [[Thomas Graham (chemist)|Thomas Graham]] professor of [[chemistry]], [[Robert Edmond Grant]] professor of [[comparative anatomy]], [[George Viner Ellis]] professor of [[anatomy]] and [[William Benjamin Carpenter]] professor of [[medical jurisprudence]].{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} Lister often spoke highly of Lindley and Graham in his writings, but [[Thomas Wharton Jones|Wharton Jones]] professor of [[ophthalmology|ophthalmic medicine]] and surgery, and [[William Sharpey]] professor of [[physiology]], exercised the greatest influence on him.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} He was greatly attracted by Dr. Sharpey's lectures, which inspired in him a love of experimental physiology and histology that never left him.{{sfn|Lister|1900|p=6}}

[[Thomas Henry Huxley]] praised Wharton Jones for the method and quality of his physiology lectures.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} As a clinical scientist working in physiological sciences, he was foremost in the number of discoveries he made.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} He was also considered a brilliant ophthalmic surgeon, his main field.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} He conducted research into the circulation of blood and the phenomena of inflammation, carried out on the frog's web{{efn|The webbed feet of the hind leg of a chloroformed frog.}}  and the bat's wing, and no doubt suggested this method of research to Lister.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} Sharpey was called the ''father of modern physiology'' as he was the first to give a series of lectures on the subject.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} Prior to that the field had been considered part of anatomy.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} Sharpey studied at Edinburgh University, then went to Paris to study clinical surgery under French anatomist [[Guillaume Dupuytren]] and operative surgery under [[Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin]]. Sharpey met Syme while in Paris and became the two became life-long friends.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=16}} After he moved to Edinburgh he taught anatomy with [[Allen Thomson]] as his physiological colleague. He left Edinburgh in 1836, to become the first Professor of Physiology.

{{multiple image | header = Lister's university and his lecturers | align = center | direction = horizontal | total_width = 850| float = none
|image1=UCL Gower Street.jpg|caption1=Gower street entrance to the university|alt1=Gower street
|image2=Thomas Wharton Jones2.jpg|caption2= Wharton Jones |alt2=Wharton Jones, published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology 1921
|image3=William Sharpey.jpg|caption3=William Sharpey|alt3=William Sharpey, taken in 1874
|image4=Flore des serres v16 093a.jpg|caption4=John Lindley|alt4=John Lindley, English Botanist
|image5=Thomas Graham Litho.JPG|caption5=Thomas Graham|alt5=Thomas Graham, taken in 1856
|image6=Robert Grant72.jpg|caption6=Robert Grant|alt6=Robert Grant, taken in 1852
|image7=William Carpenter.jpg|caption7=William Carpenter|alt7=William Carpenter, date is unknown
}}

====Clinical instruction====
[[File:Microscope, English, 1830-1850, given to Lord Lister by his Wellcome L0057966.jpg|thumb|right|The microscope given to Lister in 1849 by his father J.J. Lister who designed it. This is the third in a set of three built by James Smith. It is an Achromatic microscope with a compound automatic objective and graduated automatic objective.{{sfn|Wellcome Historical Medical Museum|1927|p=134}}]]
To qualify for his degree, Lister had to complete two years of clinical instruction,{{sfn|Bonner|2000|p=194}} and began his residency at [[University College Hospital]] in October 1850.{{sfn|Fitzharris|2018|p=45}} as an intern and then house physician to [[Walter Hayle Walshe]],{{sfn|Plarr's|2008}} professor of pathological anatomy and author of the 1846 study, ''The Nature and Treatment of Cancer''.{{sfn|Walshe|1846}} Lister in 1850 again received "Certificates of Honours" and won two gold medals in anatomy and a silver medal each in surgery and medicine.{{sfn|Lister|1859a|p=26}}

In his second year in 1851, Lister became first a dresser in January 1851{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=32}} then a house surgeon to [[John Eric Erichsen]] in May 1851.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} Erichsen was professor of surgery{{sfn|Pitt|Aubin|2012}} and author of the 1853 ''Science and Art of Surgery'',{{sfn|Erichsen|1853}} described as one of the most celebrated English-language textbooks on surgery.{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=32}} The book went through many editions; [[Marcus Beck]] edited the eighth and ninth, adding Lister's antiseptic techniques and [[Pasteur]] and [[Robert Koch]]'s [[germ theory]].{{sfn|Plarr's|2012}}

Lister's first case notes were recorded on 5 February 1851. As a dresser, his immediate superior was [[Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet|Henry Thompson]], who recalled "..a shy Quaker...I remember that he had a better microscope than any man in the college".{{sfn|Fitzharris|2018|p=42}}

Lister had only just begun working in his role as dresser to Erichsen in January 1851, when an epidemic of [[erysipelas]] broke out in the male ward.{{sfn|Richardson|2013b}} An infected patient from an Islington workhouse was left in Erichsen's surgical ward for two hours.{{sfn|Richardson|2013b}} The hospital had been free of infection but within days there were twelve cases of infection and four deaths.{{sfn|Richardson|2013b}} 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 that those with older surgeries with suppurating wounds, 'mostly escaped'.{{sfn|Richardson|2013b}} It was while Lister worked for Erichsen, that his interest in the healing of wounds began.{{sfn|Pitt|Aubin|2012}} Erichsen was a [[miasma theory|miasmatist]] who thought the wounds became infected from ''miasmas'' from the wound itself that caused a noxious form of "bad air" that spread to other patients in the ward.{{sfn|Pitt|Aubin|2012}} Erichsen believed that seven patients with an infected wound had saturated of the ward with "bad air", which spread to cause gangrene.{{sfn|Pitt|Aubin|2012}} However Lister saw that some wounds, when [[debridement|debrided]] and cleaned, would sometimes heal. He believed that something in the wound itself was at fault.{{sfn|Pitt|Aubin|2012}}

When he became a house surgeon, Lister had patients put in his charge.{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=32}} For the first time, he came into contact face-to-face with various forms of blood-poisoning diseases like [[pyaemia]]{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=562}} and hospital gangrene, which rots living tissue with a remarkable rapidity.{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=32}}{{sfn|Cohen|1999}} While examining in an [[autopsy]] an excision of the elbow of a little boy who had died of [[pyaemia]], Lister noticed that a thick yellow-[[pus]] was present at the seat of the [[humerus bone]], and distended the [[brachial veins|brachial]] and [[axillary vein]]s.{{sfn|Lister|1900|p=7}} He also noticed that the pus advanced in the reverse direction along the veins, bypassing the valves in the veins.{{sfn|Lister|1900|p=7}} He also found suppuration in a knee-joint and multiple [[abscess]]es in the lungs.{{sfn|Lister|1900|p=7}} Lister knew that [[Charles-Emmanuel Sédillot]] had discovered that multiple abscesses in the lungs were caused by introducing pus into the veins of an animal. At the time he could not explain the facts but believed the pus in the organs had a [[metastatic]] origin.{{sfn|Lister|1900|p=7}} On 2 October 1900, during [[The Huxley Lecture]], Lister described how his interest in the [[germ theory of disease]] and how it applied to surgery began with his investigation into the death of that little boy.{{sfn|Glass|2014}}

There was an epidemic of gangrene during his surgeoncy. The treatment method was to chloroform the patient, scrape the soft slough off and burn the necrotic flesh away with [[mercury pernitrate]]{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=32}} Occasionally the treatment would succeed, but when a grey film appeared at the edges of the wound,  it presaged death.{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=32}} In one patient, the repeated treatment failed several times, so Erichsen amputated the limb, which healed fine.{{sfn|Lister|1900|p=9}} Lister recognised was that the disease was a "local poison" and probably parasitic in nature.{{sfn|Lister|1900|p=9}} He examined the diseased tissues under his microscope. He saw peculiar objects that he could not identify, as he had no frame of reference to draw conclusions from these observations.{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=32}} In his notebook he recorded:

<blockquote>I imagined they might be the materies morbi in the form of some kind of fungus.{{efn|Materies morbi, meaning morbid material is an obsolete medical term that describes a  material substance that acts as the immediate cause of a disease}}</blockquote>

Lister wrote two papers on the epidemics; but both were lost: ''Hospital gangrene''{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} and ''Microscope''. They were read to the Student Medical Society at UCL.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}}

====Lister's first operation====
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, made while both were researching his career.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} At 1{{nbsp}}pm on 27 June 1851, Lister, a second-year medical student working at a casualty ward in Gower Street, conducted his first operation. Julia Sullivan, a mother of eight grown children, had been stabbed in the abdomen by her husband, a drunk and ne'er-do-well, who was taken into custody.{{sfn|Rose|2014}} On 15 September 1851, Lister was called as a witness to the husband's trial at the [[Old Bailey]].{{sfn|Rose|2014}} His testimony helped convict the husband, who was [[transported to Australia]] for 20 years.{{sfn|Rose|2014}}

About a yard of [[small intestine]] about eight inches across, damaged in two places, protruded from the woman's lower [[abdomen]], which had three open wounds.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} After cleaning the intestines with blood-warm water, Lister was unable to place them back into the body, so he decided to extend the cut.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} then placed them back into the abdomen, and sewed and [[surgical suture|sutured]] the wounds shut.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} He administered [[opium]] to induce [[constipation]] and enable the intestines to recover. Sullivan recovered her health.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} This was a full decade before his first public operation in the Glasgow Infirmary.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}}

This operation was missed by historians.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}} Liverpool consultant surgeon John Shepherd, in his essay on Lister, ''Joseph Lister and abdominal surgery'', written in 1968,{{sfn|Shepard|1968}} failed to mention the operation, and instead started his account from the 1860s onwards. He apparently was unaware of this surgery.{{sfn|Richardson|Rhodes|2013}}

====Microscope experiments 1852====
=====Observations on the Contractile Tissue of the Iris=====
Lister's first paper,{{sfn|Lister|1853a}} written while he was still at university,{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=30}} was published in the ''[[Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science]]'' in 1853.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=22}}

On 11 August 1852, Lister attended an operation at University College Hospital by Wharton Jones,{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=29}} who presented him with a fresh slice of human [[Iris (anatomy)|iris]]. Lister took the opportunity to study the iris.{{sfn|Lister|1853a}} He reviewed existing research and studied tissue from a horse, a cat, a rabbit and a guinea pig as well as six surgical specimens from patients who had undergone eye surgery.{{sfn|Howard|2013|p=193}} Lister was unable to complete his research to his satisfaction, due to his need to pass his final examination. He offered an apology in the paper:

{{blockquote|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.{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=30}}}}

The paper advanced the work of Swiss physiologist [[Albert von Kölliker]], demonstrating the existence of two distinct muscles, the dilator and sphincter in the [[Iris (anatomy)|iris]].{{sfn|Clark|1920}} This corrected the convictions of previous researchers that there was no dilator pupillae muscle.{{sfn|Howard|2013|p=193}}

=====Observations on the Muscular Tissue of the Skin=====
His next paper, an investigation into [[goose bumps]],{{sfn|Wrench|1913|p=31}}{{sfn|Lister|1853b}} was published on 1 June 1853 in the same journal.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=23}} Lister was able to confirm Kölliker's experimental finding that in humans the [[smooth muscle]] fibres are responsible for making hair stand out from the skin, in contrast to other mammals, whose large tactile hairs are associated with [[striated muscle]].{{sfn|Howard|2013|p=193}} Lister also demonstrated a new method of creating histological sections from the tissue of the scalp.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|pp=23-24}}

Lister's microscopy skills were so advanced that he was able to correct the observations of German histologist [[Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle|Friedrich Gustav Henle]], who mistook small blood vessels for [[muscle fibres]].{{sfn|Lister|1853b|pp=6-7}} In each of the papers, he created camera lucida drawings so accurate that they could be used to scale and measure the observations.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=23}}

Both papers attracted significant attention in Britain and abroad.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=24}} Naturalist [[Richard Owen]], an old friend of Lister's father, was particularly impressed by them.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=24}} Owen contemplated recruiting Lister for his department and forwarded him a thank-you letter on 2 August 1853.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=24}} Kölliker was particularly pleased with the analysis that Lister had formulated. Kölliker made many trips to Britain, and eventually met Lister. They became life-long friends.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=24}} Their close friendship was described in a letter by Kölliker on 17 November 1897, that [[Rickman Godlee]] chose to use to illustrate their relationship.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=25}} Kölliker sent a letter to Lister when he was president of the [[Royal Society]], congratulating him on receiving the Copley medal, fondly remembering old friends who had died, and celebrating his time in Scotland with Syme and Lister. Kölliker was 80 years old at the time.{{sfn|Godlee|1924|p=25}}