John Rutherford Ryley

The speed with which the practice of Listerian antisepsis spread throughout the world owed much to the enthusiasm of those students and surgeons who had seen the benefits with their own eyes and become zealous converts to the new disipline. As an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow, John Rutherford Ryley came under the influence of Joseph Lister and was inspired by the results of Lister’s innovation. The year after Lister published this work, Ryley was practising antiseptic surgery in New Zealand and was the first to introduce it in that country. A restless spirit, he travelled widely, visiting Australia, Fiji, South Africa, Canada and Edinburgh before returning to Sydney, Australia. He died from an intentional overdose of morphine at the age of 46.

John Rutherford Ryley was born in Ireland and studied medicine in Glasgow. He was one of the first students of Joseph Lister who arrived as Professor of Surgery in Glasgow in 1860. He qualified LRCSEd in 1862 and emigrated shortly thereafter to New Zealand, where he was appointed Surgeon Superintendent of the Hokitika Hospital, the principal town and access for the Westland Gold fields. Using Lister’s antiseptic method on compound fractures in these gold mines in January 1868 he published reports that year in three journals, including the Australian Medical Journal and the Lancet. That account was the first information from overseas published in that journal about the use of Listerian antisepsis. In May of 1868 he returned to Edinburgh and was elected to the Fellowship of the College. Thereafter his life was characterised by a form of depressive illness and by a restlessness which resulted in much travelling around the world. In 1870 he was committed to the Auckland Lunatic Asylum. On discharge he moved to Fiji where he set up in surgical practice, becoming Chief Coroner and Principal Officer of Health for Fiji the following year. From there he went to Australia where he practised in four different towns before sailing for South Africa where he was attached to a field hospital during the First Boer War. Returning to Sydney, he practised at four different locations. He died at the early age of 46 from an intentional overdose of morphine.