Joseph Lister: His Contributions to Early Experimental Physiology

Joseph Lister (1827–1912) acquired a lifelong interest in histology and experimental physiology while a student at University College London between 1848 and 1852. His first two publications in 1853 were histological studies of the contractile tissue of the iris and the skin. Studies of inflammation in 1855 progressed to experiments on the nervous control of arteries, using techniques of peripheral nerve division, spinal cord section and needle stimulation of the brain. This interest in nervous mechanisms led to innovative experiments on gut motility and the autonomic nervous system, from which he inferred that sympathetic nerve control was mediated via intrinsic neuronal plexuses in the gut wall, a mode of action confirmed 100 years later, in 1964–65. It is not generally known that Lister was elected FRS for this early experimental work and that his early commitment to experimental science and microscopy was the background to his later work on the development of surgical antisepsis.