Definition of Joseph Lister
1. Noun. English surgeon who was the first to use antiseptics (1827-1912).
Medical Definition of Joseph Lister
1.
Lister's surgical achievements certainly place him as the figurehead of English medicine. Born into a studious Quaker family in Upton, England, where his father was a wealthy wine merchant and also a maker of optical instruments, Joseph was influenced into scientific problems.
While a medical student, he was encouraged in research, and later published two articles, the first on the dilator and sphincter muscles of the iris (enlarge and diminish the size of the pupil) and the second, describing the involuntary muscles (erector pillores) of the skin which elevated the hairs (and cause "goose bumps").
After graduating from the non-sectarian University of London Medical School, (called the Godless College) he became interested in microscopic anatomy, physiology, the mechanism of inflammation, and intravascular clotting.
Lister migrated to Edinburgh, to visit the famous Syme's Clinic, married Agnes, the daughter of James Syme, Professor of Surgery, and six years later became Chief of Surgery at Glasgow. He experienced friends and dissenters throughout his life. Deeply impressed by the high incidence of mortality after amputations (45%), he insisted on rigid cleanliness.
These were the times that "laudable pus" was necessary to heal wounds. Lister was firmly convinced that pus (purulency) was not necessary, but was actually detrimental to healing. He tried various antiseptic solutions (zinc chloride, bichloride of mercury, sulfites) to sterilise wounds and finally settled on carbolic acid spray (1865).
His patients' mortality dropped dramatically. Lister soaked his silk and catgut sutures in carbolic acid, and used the same solution when he cleansed and dressed wounds frequently. Joseph Lister was called to Edinburgh to follow his father-in-law, Syme as professor. He was the first physician to sit in the House of Lords (1897).
Upon his death this peer of the surgical world was buried in Westminster Abbey alongside his wife, and the entire guild of surgeons realised that the British island had laid to rest her greatest surgeon.
Lived: 1827-1912.
This entry appears with permission from the Dictionary of Cell and Molecular Biology
(11 Mar 2008)
Lexicographical Neighbors of Joseph Lister
Literary usage of Joseph Lister
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. A Time to Heal: The Diffusion of Listerism in Victorian Britain by Jerry L. Gaw (1999)
"Lister, Joseph Jackson to Joseph Lister, 20 March 1868. ... Joseph Lister Papers,
Library, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, GD5, 1. ..."
2. The American Journal of the Medical Sciences by Southern Society for Clinical Investigation (U.S.) (1853)
"... on the contractile tissue of the iris by Joseph Lister, BA, from the first
number of the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Oct. 1852] :— Our ..."
3. Report of the Annual Meeting (1858)
"By Joseph Lister, FRCSE The objects of the experiments were twofold—1st, to
ascertain the character of the flow of the chyle under ordinary circumstances, ..."
4. The Queensland Law Journal Reports by W. H. Osborne (1893)
"Un the 4th day of October 1886 the said Joseph Lister executed a further and
other mortgage to the said Bank over all that piece of land described in ..."
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