The Butchering Art

by Lindsey Fitzharris

  University College Hospital had a swift: UCH/MR/1/63, University College London Archives.

  3. THE SUTURED GUT

  “We should ask ourselves”: Quoted in Bransby Blake Cooper, The Life of Sir Astley Cooper (London: J. W. Parker, 1843), 2:207.

  Other wards had recently installed gaslit: R. S. Pilcher, “Lister’s Medical School,” British Journal of Surgery 54 (1967): 422. See also blueprints of building found in Merrington, University College Hospital, 78–79.

  One of Erichsen’s patients: Pilcher, “Lister’s Medical School,” 422.

  He set the candle down: I am hugely indebted to Ruth Richardson and Bryan Rhodes for the information in this chapter. They were the first to discover this obscure surgery that Lister had performed at the very beginning of his career. See Ruth Richardson and Bryan Rhodes, “Joseph Lister’s First Operation,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 67, no. 4 (2013): 375–85.

  “does agree to part with my wife”: C. Kenny, “Wife-Selling in England,” Law Quarterly Review 45 (1929): 496.

  In another instance, a journalist: “Letters Patent Have Passed the Great Seal of Ireland…,” Times, July 18, 1797, 3.

  Between 1800 and 1850: Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England, 1530–1987 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 429.

  The editor of The Times criticized: “The Disproportion Between the Punishments,” Times, Aug. 24, 1846, 4.

  “It is evident to all”: Harriet Taylor Mill and John Stuart Mill [unheaded leader—Assault Law], Morning Chronicle, May 31, 1850, 4.

  This was the world in which Julia: The account of what happened to Julia Sullivan (unless stated otherwise) comes from Proceedings of the Central Criminal Court, Sept. 15, 1851, 27–32, available online at https://www.oldbaileyonline.org.

  The drunken perpetrator ranted: “Central Criminal Court, Sept. 17,” Times, Sept. 18, 1851, 7.

  In general, a sick person: Stanley, For Fear of Pain, 136.

  In 1845, King’s College Hospital: Ibid.

  In 1835, The Times reported: T.W.H., “To the Editor of the Times,” Times, July 11, 1835, 3.

  Julia Sullivan was lucky: Details of this operation are largely derived from Lister’s testimony in the Old Bailey records and John Eric Erichsen, “University College Hospital: Wound of the Abdomen; Protrusion and Perforation of the Intestines and Mesentery; Recovery,” The Lancet, Nov. 1, 1851, 414–15.

  Very early in Lister’s residency: “Mirror on the Practice of Medicine and Surgery in the Hospitals of London: University College Hospital,” The Lancet, Jan. 11, 1851, 41–42.

  The surgeon Benjamin Travers: Benjamin Travers, “A Case of Wound with Protrusion of the Stomach,” Edinburgh Journal of Medical Science 1 (1826): 81–84.

  Later in 1851, her case: Erichsen, “University College Hospital: Wound of the Abdomen; Protrusion and Perforation of the Intestines and Mesentery; Recovery,” 415. Two years later, Erichsen published a textbook, The Science and Art of Surgery, in which he refers to the stabbing. He fails to credit Lister’s heroic surgical efforts, without which Julia Sullivan would most certainly have died that nerve-racking evening. Unfortunately, the casebooks relating to Erichsen’s female patients have since been lost, so we don’t have Lister’s own notes on Julia Sullivan’s operation.

  “Nothing is so likely to strike”: Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People, with Forty Illustrations (London: Chapman & Hall, 1839), 210.

  4. THE ALTAR OF SCIENCE

  “Men may rise on stepping-stones”: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (London: Edward Moxon, 1850) I, lines 3–4.

  There were some incredibly lucky cases: John Eric Erichsen, The Science and Art of Surgery: Being a Treatise on Surgical Injuries, Diseases, and Preparations (London: Walton and Maberly, 1853), 698–99.

  Between 1834 and 1850: Stanley, For Fear of Pain, 73.

  “broken glass or porcelain”: [The Annual Report of the Committee of the Charing Cross Hospital], Spectator 10 (London, 1837), 58.

  These accidents often involved children: Accident Report for Martha Appleton, A Scavenger, Aug. 1859, HO 45/6753, National Archives.

  There was a fifty-six-year-old painter: Notes of cases taken by Lister, student number 351, for the Fellowe’s Clinical Medal at University College Hospital 1851, MS0021/4/4 (3), Royal College of Surgeons of England.

  “Dust does not kill suddenly”: Quoted in Jack London, People of the Abyss (New York: Macmillan 1903), 258. See also John Thomas Arlidge, The Hygiene, Diseases, and Mortality of Occupations (London: Percival, 1892).

  Over the summer, two people: For more on treatment of scurvy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Mark Harrison, “Scurvy on Sea and Land: Political Economy and Natural History, c. 1780–c. 1850,” Journal for Maritime Research (Print) 15, no. 1 (2013): 7–15. It wasn’t until 1928 that the biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi isolated from adrenal glands the substance that enables the body to use carbohydrates, fats, and protein efficiently. It would be another four years before Charles Glen King discovered vitamin C in his laboratory and concluded that it was identical to the substance that Szent-Györgyi described—providing clear links between scurvy and vitamin C deficiencies.

  “an eccentric gentleman”: “Origin of the No Nose Club,” Star, Feb. 18, 1874, 3.

  At University College Hospital: Notes of cases taken by Lister, student number 351, for the Fellowe’s Clinical Medal at University College Hospital, 1851, MS0021/4/4 (3), Royal College of Surgeons of England.

  Another case involved a twenty-one-year-old: Ibid.

  An artificial leech: Robert Ellis, Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851 (London: W. Clowes and Sons, 1851), 3:1070.

  One exhibitor from Paris: Ibid., 1170.

  “It is a wonderful place”: Margaret Smith, ed., The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, with a Selection of Letters by Family and Friends (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 2:630.

  “I even saw … a valve”: Quoted in Godlee, Lord Lister, 28.

  After he had caught a lamprey: Drawings of Lamprey, March 31, April 2, April 7, 1852, MS0021/4/4 (2/6), Royal College of Surgeons of England.

  “This instrument seems to have been”: Quoted in Fisher, Joseph Lister, 48.

  “As a student at University College”: Joseph Lister, “The Huxley Lecture on Early Researches Leading Up to the Antiseptic System of Surgery,” The Lancet, Oct. 6, 1900, 985.

  It would take another hundred years: Jackie Rosenhek, “The Art of Artificial Insemination,” Doctor’s Review, Oct. 2013, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.doctorsreview.com/history/history-artificial-insemination/.

  In 1852, Lister made his first: A. E. Best, “Reflections on Joseph Lister’s Edinburgh Experiments on Vaso-motor Control,” Medical History 14, no. 1 (1970): 10–30. See also Edward R. Howard, “Joseph Lister: His Contributions to Early Experimental Physiology,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 67, no. 3 (2013): 191–98.

  Lister carefully teased portions of tissue: Joseph Lister, “Observations on the Contractile Tissue of the Iris,” Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science 1 (1853): 8–11.

  “the wound swells, the skin retracts”: John Bell, The Principles of Surgery, 2nd ed., abridged by J. Augustine Smith (New York: Collins, 1812), 26–27.

  The first English descriptions: Reported in T. Trotter, Medicina Nautica (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1797–1803), cited in I. Loudon, “Necrotising Fasciitis, Hospital Gangrene, and Phagedena,” The Lancet, Nov. 19, 1994, 1416.

  “whole length of the urethra”: Quoted in Loudon, “Necrotising Fasciitis,” 1416.

  “Without the circle of infected walls”: Bell, Principles of Surgery, 28.

  “This hospital gangrene”: James Syme, The Principles of Surgery (Edinburgh: MacLaughlan & Stewart, 1832), 69.

  When outbreaks occurred: Worboys, Spreading Germs, 75.

  “As a rule … a
perfectly healthy”: Joseph Lister, “The Huxley Lecture by Lord Lister, F.R.C.S., President of the Royal Society,” British Medical Journal, Oct. 6, 1900, 969.

  Only in one case: Ibid.

  “I examined microscopically”: Ibid.

  “the allurements of medicine”: Godlee, Lord Lister, 28.

  “Had it not been for you”: Ibid., 21.

  “I think it as well”: Ibid., 22.

  “I care but little comparatively for this”: Lister to Godlee, reply to a letter dated Nov. 28, 1852, MS 6970/1, Wellcome Library.

  It was true that Lister: Notes of cases taken by Lister, student no. 351, for the Fellowe’s Clinical Medal at University College Hospital 1851, MS0021/4/4 (3), Royal College of Surgeons of England.

  5. THE NAPOLEON OF SURGERY

  “Were I to place a man”: William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures, Delivered by Dr. William Hunter, to his Last Course of Anatomical Lectures, at his Theatre in Windmill-Street (London: Printed by order of the trustees, for J. Johnson, 1784), 73.

  “never unnecessarily wasted a word”: Quoted in Alexander Peddie, “Dr. John Brown: His Life and Work; with Narrative Sketches of James Syme in the Old Minto House Hospital and Dispensary Days; Being the Harveian Society Oration, Delivered 11th April 1890,” Edinburgh Medical Journal 35, pt. 2 (Jan.–June 1890): 1058.

  “Had it not been for”: Alexander Miles, The Edinburgh School of Surgery Before Lister (London: A. & C. Black, 1918), 181–82.

  Over a third of these households: A. J. K. Cairncross, ed., Census of Scotland, 1861–1931 (Cambridge, U.K., 1954).

  Within these quarters, crime rates soared: “Statistics of Crime in Edinburgh,” Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh), Jan. 21, 1856.

  “foully tainted, and rendered almost unendurable”: James Begg, Happy Homes for Working Men, and How to Get Them (London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1866), 159.

  In one instance, a father grieving: Ibid.

  “I shall not have, as in London”: Quoted in Godlee, Lord Lister, 31.

  “There, gentlemen, is what”: Quoted in John D. Comrie, History of Scottish Medicine, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London: Published for the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum by Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1932), 596.

  “Huh, so you’ve come”: Ibid., 596–97.

  In that same year: The site of the hospital is now occupied by the Royal Museum of Scotland.

  “Don’t support quackery and humbug”: Quoted in R. G. Williams Jr., “James Syme of Edinburgh,” Historical Bulletin: Notes and Abstracts Dealing with Medical History 16, no. 2 (1951): 27.

  “tell me that you wish”: Ibid., 28.

  Indeed, at times, Edinburgh: For more on the duel, see Stanley, For Fear of Pain, 37.

  It was massive: Bill Yule, Matrons, Medics, and Maladies (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), 3–5.

  “If the day were twice”: Quoted in Godlee, Lord Lister, 30.

  “My present opportunities are teaching”: Ibid., 34.

  A few days later, Syme: Fisher makes this point in his book Joseph Lister, 60–61.

  “If the love of surgery is a proof”: Godlee, Lord Lister, 35.

  “Nullius jurare in verba magistri”: Ibid., 37.

  “I am pleased to be”: Ibid., 37, 38.

  “Why! You must be”: Letter from George Buchanan to Joseph Lister, Dec. 10–11, 1853, MS 6970/3, Wellcome Library.

  “Two lives … depended upon the slow”: G. T. Wrench, Lord Lister: His Life and Work (London: Unwin, 1913), 45.

  “there was written the anxiety”: Ibid., 46.

  “Even now I cannot, without a shudder”: James Syme, Observations in Clinical Surgery (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1861), 160.

  The seconds ticked by: Wrench, Lord Lister, 47.

  Lister quickly gained the respect: Hector Charles Cameron, Joseph Lister: The Friend of Man (London: William Heinemann Medical Books, 1948), 34.

  “drunken night nurses”: Nightingale to R. G. Whitfield, Nov. 8, 1856 (LMA) H1/ST/NC1/58/6, London Metropolitan Archives, quoted in Lynn McDonald, ed., Florence Nightingale: Extending Nursing (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009), 303.

  The poet W. E. Henley: Poem quoted in Cameron, Joseph Lister, 34–35.

  “[In] high dudgeon, she snatched”: Ibid., 35.

  The Cat’s Nick cut: John Beddoe, Memories of Eighty Years (Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1910), 56.

  “I feel giddy”: Ibid.

  “whirled down the talus”: Ibid.

  “Eh, Doketur Bedie!”: Ibid., 56–57.

  “If I had killed my friend”: Ibid., 55.

  6. THE FROG’S LEGS

  “Everywhere questions arose”: Quoted in William J. Sinclair, Semmelweis: His Life and His Doctrine: A Chapter in the History of Medicine (Manchester: University Press, 1909), 46.

  “We had, as you know”: “The Late Richard Mackenzie MD,” Association Medical Journal (1854): 1023, 1024.

  “Many were struck down”: Ibid., 1024. For more on Mackenzie, see also Medical Times & Gazette 2 (1854): 446–47.

  During the two-and-a-half-year conflict: Matthew Smallman-Raynora and Andrew D. Cliff, “The Geographical Spread of Cholera in the Crimean War: Epidemic Transmission in the Camp Systems of the British Army of the East, 1854–55,” Journal of Historical Geography 30 (2004): 33. See also Army Medical Department, The Medical and Surgical History of the British Army Which Served in Turkey and the Crimea During the War Against Russia in the Years 1854–55–56, vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1858).

  “the only passport”: Quoted in Frieda Marsden Sandwith, Surgeon Compassionate: The Story of Dr. William Marsden, Founder of the Royal Free and Royal Marsden Hospitals (London: P. Davies, 1960), 70.

  “The new Surgeon will be thrown”: Letter from William Sharpey to James Syme, Dec. 1, 1854, MS 6979/21, Wellcome Library.

  “Thou art now at liberty”: Letter from Joseph Jackson Lister to Joseph Lister, Dec. 5, 1854, MS 6965/11, Wellcome Library.

  “If a man is not to take”: Ibid., 40.

  “premises that are in their character”: Joseph Jackson Lister to Joseph Lister, April 16, 1855, MS 6965/13, Wellcome Library.

  In September, he collected his first fee: Godlee, Lord Lister, 43.

  As well-appointed as Lister’s: Description of Millbank House can be found in Robert Paterson, Memorials of the Life of James Syme, Professor of Clinical Surgery in the University of Edinburgh, etc. (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1874), 293–95. See also Wrench, Lord Lister, 42–44.

  In a letter back home: Joseph Lister to Rickman Godlee, Aug. 4, 1855, MS 6969/4, Wellcome Library.

  “Thy dear mother tells me”: Joseph Jackson Lister to Joseph Lister, March 25, 1853, MS6965/8, Wellcome Library.

  “As Syme was a stalking”: Quoted in Fisher, Joseph Lister, 63. Poem, “’Tis of a winemerchant who in London did dwell,” by John Beddoe, David Christison, and Patrick Heron Watson, May 15, 1854, MS6979/9, Wellcome Library.

  “I would not allow”: Letter from Joseph Jackson Lister to Joseph Lister, July 24, 1855, MS6965/14, Wellcome Library.

  “attend the worship of ‘Friends’”: Joseph Jackson Lister to Joseph Lister, Oct. 18, 1855, MS6965/16, Wellcome Library.

  “My preference like thine”: Joseph Jackson Lister to Joseph Lister, Feb. 23, 1856, MS6965/20, Wellcome Library.

  The wedding gifts began: Ibid.

  With Agnes’s considerable dowry: Joseph Jackson and James Syme negotiated a settlement for the marriage. Syme gave two thousand pounds in securities and two thousand pounds in cash, and Lister’s father also contributed to the union. For more information, see Fisher, Joseph Lister, 80.

  well provided with a sink: Ibid., letter from Joseph Lister to Isabella Lister, Jan.?–6, 1856, MS6968/2, Wellcome Library.

  “out of consideration”: Quoted in Fisher, Joseph Lister, 81.

  “Lister is one who, I believe”: Quoted in Sir Hector Clare Cameron, Lord Lister 1827–1912: An Oration (Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1914), 9. Some sources contest whether this was d
elivered at Lister’s wedding reception or at a later date.

  In the 1850s, however: Youngson, Scientific Revolution, 34–35.

  Moreover, there was a debate: Worboys, Spreading Germs, 76.

  “felt that the early stages”: Quoted in Godlee, Lord Lister, 43.

  “the patient is kept”: Robert Liston, Practical Surgery, 3rd ed. (London: John Churchill, 1840), 31.

  “The bandages and instruments”: Year-Book of Medicine, Surgery, and Their Allied Sciences for 1862 (London: Printed for the New Sydenham Society, 1863), 213, quoted in Youngson, Scientific Revolution, 38.

  During the first year: Fisher, Joseph Lister, 84.

  Until this time, Lister: Later in life, Lister said that he considered his research into the nature of inflammation to be an “essential preliminary” to his conception of the antiseptic principle and insisted these early findings be included in any memorial volume of his work. In 1905, when he was seventy-eight years old, he wrote, “If my works are read when I am gone, these will be the ones most highly thought of” (quoted ibid., 89).

  Lister’s investigations into inflammation: Edward R. Howard, “Joseph Lister: His Contributions to Early Experimental Physiology,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 67, no. 3 (2013): 191–98.

  “the arteries, which had previously”: Quoted in Fisher, Joseph Lister, 87. Joseph Lister, “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 (1858): 612–13.

  “The blood had ceased to move”: Ibid., 614.

  “one third had to be spoken”: Quoted in Godlee, Lord Lister, 61.

  “a certain amount of inflammation”: Joseph Lister, “On the Early Stages of Inflammation,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 148 (1858): 700.

  In opposition to Wharton Jones: Howard, “Joseph Lister,” 194.

  These early studies were crucial: Ibid.

  “I am ready to ask”: Joseph Jackson Lister to Joseph Lister, Jan. 31, 1857, MS6965/26, Wellcome Library.

  7. CLEANLINESS AND COLD WATER

  “The surgeon is like the husbandman”: Richard Volkmann, “Die moderne Chirurgie,” Sammlung klinischer Vortrage, quoted in Sir Rickman John Godlee, Lord Lister, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1918), 123.