Lister, 1827-1912 : a house surgeon's memories / [St. Clair Thomson].

Thomson, St. Clair, 1859-1943.

Date:: [1937]

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lister, 1827-1912 : a house surgeon's memories / [St. Clair Thomson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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that love of botany, and of the ways of birds, which gave him so much happiness during his long life. (Fig. 3.) From his father he inherited other things besides a compe¬ tence. Amongst them was a taste for scientific pursuits : the wine merchant was deeply interested in the science of optics; he helped to perfect the microscope and was a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also a good classical scholar and skilful with both brush and pencil. Student Days. After attending private schools in Hitchin and Tottenham, Lister entered University College, London, in 1844 at the age of 17. University College would appeal to him as a Quaker, for it had recently been founded as a non-secretarian institution. King’s College had also been started about the same time, to maintain the tenets of the Church of England. It is interesting to remember that Lister began his academic career in one college and finished it in the other; he is gratefully remembered in both.1 Also we might remember that he was born a Quaker, but that, after his marriage, he joined the Church of England. He matriculated in 1845 and in 1847 he took his B.A. It is worth noting that, in gaining this degree, he did not secure either medals or honours. He had taken out the Arts Course at his father’s suggestion, but we may conclude that he did not possess the gifts to shine in any of the subjects, although he himself always recommended the same course to any young men entering the medical profession—if the time and money required for doing so could be spared. But this was not the happiest time of his life : he worked very hard in gloomy surroundings, he had an attack of smallpox, and he returned too soon afterwards to his studies with redoubled energy, so that it is not surprising that he had a serious nervous breakdown necessitating a long holiday in the early part of 1848. Hence he was twenty years of age when he entered the Medical Department of University College in 1848. But, in contra-distinction to his record in the Arts department, when he took his M.B. in 1852 he not only obtained distinctions in other subjects, but he secured the Gold Medal and Scholarship in Surgery. In the same year he passed his F.R.C.S. He was then 25 years of age, but had already served as House Physician and House Surgeon in the Hospital. So, at the age of 25, he had finished a long studentship of no less than nine years (1844-1853). His hospital days were no doubt happy ones. He joined with zest in the affairs and the debates of the Students’ Medical Society. He contributed a paper on “Hospital Gangrene,’’ a disease which he himself was later on to extinguish; and also one on “The Use of the Micro¬ scope in Medicine,” showing his early scientific bent. First Operation in England under Ether. While a resident in University College Hospital he saw the first operation ever performed in this country under a general • • • vm.