ssively to Quaker schools at Hitchin and Tottenham, and from the
latter to proceed, at the age of seventeen, to University College,
London, which was non-sectarian. There the teaching was good, the
atmosphere favourable to industry, and Lister was not conscious of
hardship in missing the delights of youth that fell to his more
fortunate contemporaries.

His father lived in a comfortable house at Upton, some six miles east of
London Bridge, in a district now completely swamped by the growth of the
vast borough of West Ham. He kept up close relations with other Quaker
families living in the neighbourhood, especially the Gurneys of
Plashets. In their circle the most striking figure was Elizabeth Fry,
who from 1813 to her death in 1843 devoted herself unsparingly to the
cause of prison reform. From his home the father continued to exercise a
strong influence over his son, who was industrious and serious beyond
his years.

From his father Lister learned as a boy to delight in the use of the
microscope. He learned also to use his own power of observation, and to
make hand and eye work together to minister to his studies. The power of
drawing, which the future surgeon thus early developed, stood him in
good stead later in life; and it is interesting to contrast his
enjoyment of it with the laments made by his great contemporary Darwin,
who felt keenly what he lost through his inability to use a pencil and
to preserve the record of what he saw in nature or in the laboratory.
Lister's school-days were over when he was seventeen years old and there
is nothing remarkable to tell of them; but his period at University
College was unusually prolonged. He was a student there for seven years
and continued an eighth year, after he had taken his degree, as Acting
House Surgeon. In 1848, half-way through his time, a physical breakdown
was brought on by overwork, just as he was finishing his general
studies; but a long holiday enabled him to recover his strength, and
before the end of the year he had begun the course of medical studies
which was to be his life-work.

At school his record had been good but not brilliant, nor did he come
quickly to the front in London. His mind was not of the sort which can
be forced to produce untimely fruit in the hot-house of examinations.
But his education was both extensive and thorough; it formed an
excellent general training for the mind and a good basis for the special
studies in which he was late