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Lister and Women in Surgery

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Lister and Women in Surgery

Lister left Glasgow in 1869 to take up his position of Professor of Surgery at Edinburgh. That same year, Sophia Jex-Blake and a group of women (the Edinburgh seven) enrolled to study medicine for the first time. One part of Lister's story that is often overlooked was his opposition to women practicing surgery. 

Lister did not allow women to attend his surgical lectures. After women were allowed to study medicine in Edinburgh, he objected to their admission to clinical classes at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Therefore the first cohorts of female doctors were unable to access Lister’s classes.

Lister was openly opposed to the idea of female surgeons. In 1878 he wrote in the BMJ pressing the British Medical Association to change its constitution, to prevent female membership and to expel its two female members. Until the end of his life he resisted the “unseemliness and impropriety of having medical topics discussed without restriction in a mixed company of men and women.” (BMJ, 9 Feb 1878, p. 213). In the early 1900s he wrote to his former Glasgow student and now prominent surgeon Sir Hector Cameron urging him to oppose mixed classes at the University of Glasgow.

In Medical lives in the age of surgical revolution, Crowther and Dupree state –

“… Lister’s attitude was representative of a professional view which, having failed to exclude women completely, continued to keep them in their place.” (Cambridge, 2007)

In February 2021, Deputy Heritage Manager, Ross McGregor, was joined by consultant surgeon, Fiona Leitch, and consultant geriatrician, Morven McElroy, to chat about this rarely discussed part of Lister's life and legacy. Both Morven and Fiona are consultants at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the very hospital where Lister would have only allowed male students to attend his ward rounds and teachings.