Editing Joseph Lister (section)

====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}}