Walking Tours
The Original Edinburgh Medical Tour
9-11 February 2012
"It may well be doubted whether the scientific activities of any other man achieved as much for the saving of human life and the prevention and relief of the physical sufferings which afflict mankind."
Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Society on Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister of Lyme Regis (1827-1912)
During the two days of the Lister Centenary Celebrations to commemorate the life and work of Joseph Lister, the pioneer of antiseptic surgery, the College invites you to join a special Edinburgh Medical Tour. Starting outside the College this 90 minute walking tour will take you to many of the places where Lister lived and worked in Edinburgh.
We will see the hospitals where Lister worked first as an assistant to James Syme, Professor of Clinical Surgery, and later as Syme’s successor in the same Chair from 1869 to 1877. Passing by the site of Gardner’s Surgical Instruments where Lister’s famous Steam Spray was made, we will continue to the University of Edinburgh to hear about Lister’s time as Professor of Clinical Surgery and his medical contemporaries and students including Sir Robert Christison, Sir James Young Simpson, John Hughes Bennett, Joseph Bell, Sir Henry Littlejohn, Sir Patrick Heron Watson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Moving to the New Town, we will see where Lister set up home with his 19-year-old bride, Agnes Syme in 1856 and the nearby grave of his father-in-law, James Syme. Our final stop will be the homes where Lister lived in the New Town with the tour ending at Lister’s last Edinburgh residence at 9 Charlotte Square.
