Sir William Watson Cheyne is largely known to medical history as Lord Lister’s ‘trusted assistant’.1 He spent a lifetime defending Joseph Lister’s (1827–1912) antiseptic principle in the wake of scepticism and misunderstanding. However, his main contribution to Lister’s work was in the embryonic field of bacteriology in the 1870s–1890s, which brought him into contact with continental researchers, particularly Robert Koch (1843–1910). In this field, Cheyne built an independent reputation as an assessor, chronicler and promoter of continental laboratory methodology. He pioneered bacteriological training in British teaching hospitals and incorporated laboratory testing into case notes as standard procedure. This paper reconsiders Cheyne’s contribution to the development of bacteriology in British medicine at the end of the 19th century. It examines his motives in promoting new laboratory techniques and the methods he used to embed them in hospital procedure. It also considers how he continued to use bacteriological arguments to keep the Listerian antiseptic principle on the medical agenda well after Lister withdrew from active involvement in the field.
...More
Book
Olsen, Penny;
(2008)
A Brush with Birds: Australian Bird Art from the National Library of Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB001033757/)
Book
Louise Wilson;
Margaret Flockton;
(2016)
Margaret Flockton: A Fragrant Memory
(/isis/citation/CBB409283774/)
Book
Carolyn Landon;
(2015)
Banksia Lady: Celia Rosser, Botanical Artist
(/isis/citation/CBB529830442/)
Chapter
Veronique Deblon;
(2017)
Imitating Anatomy: Recycling Anatomical Illustrations in Nineteenth-Century Atlases
(/isis/citation/CBB653374355/)
Book
Hans Walter Lack;
(2015)
The Bauers: Joseph, Franz & Ferdinand : Masters of Botanical Illustration : an Illustrated Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB700600188/)
Book
Paul Henderson;
(2015)
James Sowerby: The Enlightenment's Natural Historian
(/isis/citation/CBB129548231/)
Article
Brauckmann, Sabine;
(2011)
Axes, Planes and Tubes, or the Geometry of Embryogenesis
(/isis/citation/CBB001221526/)
Article
Nasim, Omar W.;
(2011)
The “Landmark” and “Groundwork” of Stars: John Herschel, Photography and the Drawing of Nebulae
(/isis/citation/CBB001024142/)
Book
Mary Hunter;
(2017)
The Face of Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB646443412/)
Article
Bleichmar, Daniela;
(2006)
Painting as Exploration: Visualizing Nature in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000631064/)
Article
Bruhn, Matthias;
(2011)
Life Lines: An Art History of Biological Research around 1800
(/isis/citation/CBB001221525/)
Book
Charles DePaolo;
(2016)
William Watson Cheyne and the Advancement of Bacteriology
(/isis/citation/CBB027804091/)
Article
Marie-France Weiner;
John Russell Silver;
(2017)
The Doctor as an Artist
(/isis/citation/CBB699806959/)
Article
Hall, Lesley A.;
(2001)
Illustrations from the Wellcome Library. A “Remarkable Collection”: The Papers of Frederick Parkes Weber FRCP (1863-1962)
(/isis/citation/CBB000101533/)
Article
Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk;
(2020)
Viral Imagery of Dengue Fever in the Age of Bacteriology
(/isis/citation/CBB725291854/)
Article
Richardson, Ruth;
(2013)
Inflammation, Suppuration, Putrefaction, Fermentation: Joseph Lister's Microbiology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320254/)
Article
Santer, Melvin;
(2010)
Joseph Lister: First Use of a Bacterium as a “Model Organism” to Illustrate the Cause of Infectious Disease of Humans
(/isis/citation/CBB001022701/)
Book
Amos Morris-Reich;
(2016)
Race and Photography: Racial Photography As Scientific Evidence, 1876-1980
(/isis/citation/CBB373491380/)
Article
Kelly Krause;
(2016)
A Framework for Visual Communication at Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB025509663/)
Thesis
Winn, Wendy Lee;
(2006)
Visualizing Science: A Semiotic Analysis of Visual Representations in Ornithology Journals, 1859--2003
(/isis/citation/CBB001561460/)
Be the first to comment!