Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/112

376 have failed. But with all this, he was neither a rash experimenter nor merciless practitioner: on the contrary, he not only performed boldly and skilfully what was necessary, but stopped short where danger was to be apprehended. His manner, also, combined such gentleness with firmness, as secured the confidence and esteem of his patients. In addition to his practice, he delivered lectures, first on anatomy, and afterwards on surgery, between the years 1822 and 1834, which were highly valued and numerously attended.

Having thus won for himself a high reputation both as practitioner and instructor, it was natural that Mr. Listen should anticipate those professional honours which are so often bestowed upon candidates of greatly inferior pretensions. His hopes were directed to a professorship of surgery in the university of Edinburgh, which no one in Scotland was better (if as well) qualified to fill; but as the wished-for vacancy did not occur, or was won by a more favoured competitor, he formed a professorship for himself, with the world for his auditory, by publishing, in 1833, his "Principles of Surgery," a work which he afterwards repeatedly revised, and which went through several editions. Subsequently, many of his lectures on various subjects, and especially on lithotomy, were published in the "Lancet." Of the merits of these writings, which were recognized at once by the whole medical profession, and which have spread his fame though every medical school in Europe and America, it would now be superfluous to speak; their scientific correctness and thorough practical character, as well as the improvements which they have introduced into practical surgery, are sufficient evidences of their worth. Disappointed in his hopes of Edinburgh, and having fully tested his own powers, Dr. Listen was now desirous of a wider field, which was opened to him in 1834, by his being appointed surgeon to the North London Hospital. He left the Scottish capital in the November of that year; and so fully was his value now appreciated in Edinburgh, that before his departure a public dinner was given to him, at which the Lord Provost presided, while the addresses delivered on the occasion by the most eminent of the medical and surgical professions, who attended, made eloquent acknowledgment of his high talents and eminent services, as well as regret at their transference to another sphere of action.

In London the fame of Dr. Listen became so distinguished, that his private practice annually increased, and the most difficult and critical operations were reserved for his experienced hand. After having filled for some time the office of surgeon to the North London Hospital, he was appointed professor of clinical surgery in University College; and in 1846, in addition to that situation, which he raised to honour and distinction, he was appointed one of the examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons. In this way, notwithstanding a certain bluntness of manner which he had preserved from the beginning, his private worth, as well as professional knowledge, procured him not only the highest distinction in his own country, but a world- wide reputation, which as yet has suffered no abatement. Here, however, his career was unexpectedly closed when it was at the brightest. After enjoying almost uninterrupted good health till within a year of his death, he was attacked by a malady, the causes of which his medical advisers could not ascertain, but which was found, on a. post mortem examination, to have been occasioned by aneurism in the aorta. He died in Clifford Street, London, on the 7th of December, 1847, at the age of fifty-three.

LOCKHART, .—This distinguished miscellaneous writer, who occupied so high a station in the tribunal of literary criticism, was born at