John Lizars

John Lizars (c. 1787 – 21 May 1860) was a Scottish surgeon and anatomist.

He was professor of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and senior surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He performed the first ovariotomy in Britain in 1825. One of his pupils was Charles Darwin.

Besides authoring an early work on the dangers of tobacco, The Use and Abuse of Tobacco, Lizars published a number of important and beautifully illustrated anatomical texts in the early nineteenth century.

Life

The son of Daniel Lizars, a publisher, he was born at Edinburgh about 1787, brother to William Home Lizars and to Jane Home who married Sir William Jardine. He was educated at Royal High School and Edinburgh University, and having obtained his medical diploma by 1810, he acted as surgeon on board a man-of-war commanded by Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and saw active service on the Portuguese coast, during the Peninsular War,^[1] under Lord Exmouth.^[2]

Returning to Edinburgh in 1815, he was admitted a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of that city, and became a partner with John Bell, his old medical tutor, and Robert Allan. He was successful, first in partnership and afterwards alone, as a teacher of anatomy and surgery, and in 1831 was appointed to succeed John Turner as professor of surgery in the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. With this appointment he combined that of senior operating surgeon of the Royal Infirmary, where Robert Liston was his colleague.^[2]

Lizars introduced into surgery the operation for the removal of the upper jaw, and his name survived in the "Lizars lines".^[2]

Feud with Syme

Lizars claimed in print in 1838 that James Syme had endangered a patient's life and ruined his health by want of care in averting hemorrhage; Syme had been an unsuccessful competitor for the post held by Lizars. Syme replied with a lawsuit, in which he claimed damages for false and malicious statement.^[2] The suit was successful, but with token damages only. Syme, however, had a probable role in dissuading the College of Surgeons from re-electing a professor of surgery when Lizars's tenure of the office finished. Lizars published further criticism, in 1851, of external urethrotomy as practised by Syme. Syme retaliated with a comprehensive personal attack; this time Lizars sued, and lost.^[3]

Lizars had become eccentric, and was unable to obtain further public appointment; and his private practice declined.^[2]

Death

Lizars died suddenly, with laudanum suspected, on 21 May 1860.^[2]

Works

Lizars in 1822 issued the work by which he is now known, A System of Anatomical Plates of the Human Body, accompanied with Descriptions, and Physiological, Pathological, and Surgical Observations, Edinburgh. The plates were done by his brother William under Lizars's close supervision. It was followed in 1835 by Observations on Extraction of diseased Ovaria, illustrated by Plates coloured after Nature, 1835, and in 1835 by a System of Practical Surgery, with numerous explanatory Plates, the Drawings after Nature, Edinburgh.^[2]

References

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Seccombe, Thomas (1893). "Lizars, John". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography 33. London: Smith, Elder & Co.