Dr. Joseph Lister Works to Establish a Fund to Build a Statue to Noted Physician Rudolf Virchow
Lister was president of the fund and reaches out to Lord Avebury to serve as Treasurer
“I am glad to learn from Sir Felix Semon that you will allow your name to appear on the General Committee of the Virchow Memorial Fund. May I ask of you the further favor that you will act as Treasurer of the fund?”
Rudolf Virchow was one of the 19th century’s foremost...
“I am glad to learn from Sir Felix Semon that you will allow your name to appear on the General Committee of the Virchow Memorial Fund. May I ask of you the further favor that you will act as Treasurer of the fund?”
Rudolf Virchow was one of the 19th century’s foremost leaders in medicine and pathology. He was also a public health activist, social reformer, and anthropologist. In 1901, a committee consisting of Dr. Charles Reed, President of the American Medical Association. Dr. Henry Bowditch, President of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Robert Weir, President of the New York Academy of Medicine, and Dr. William Welch, of Johns Hopkins University, published an appeal to the American medical profession requesting contributions to the Virchow fund which was established ten years ago in honor of Rudolf Virchow’s 70th birthday, which was reached Oct. 13, 1891. The fund was created for the purpose of fostering biological, anthropological and general medical research.
When Virchow died in 1902 a fund was established to erect a statue to him. The president of the statuary fund was Dr. Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, medical scientist, and experimental pathologist, whose work in antisepsis led to his being considered the father of modern surgery. He introduced carbolic acid as an antiseptic in 1865 and in 1877, demonstrated conclusively that his method of antisepsis reduced danger to life from surgery. Others interested in the fund were Lord Avebury, a banker, politician and archaeologist who was also interested in science. He became the fund’s Treasurer; and Dr. Felix Semon, laryngologist to the National Hospital for the Paralyzed and Epileptic, in which capacity he carried out, with Victor Horsley, researches on the central motor innervation of the larynx. He was the fund’s Secretary.
This is Lister’s letter requesting that Lord Avebury serve as Treasurer of the fund.
Autograph letter signed, London, October 30, 1902, to Avebury. “I am glad to learn from Sir Felix Semon that you will allow your name to appear on the General Committee of the Virchow Memorial Fund. May I ask of you the further favor that you will act as Treasurer of the fund?” It is signed “Lister.”
An interesting letter linking Lister to other notables in the medical and business communities, and showing his own activism.
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