structural:reformatting, information:filtering, structural:expansion, stylistic:style_transfer
Holmes System of Surgery

During this period between the end of his winter lecture course and his appointment, Lister's correspondence contained little of scientific interest. Finally, a letter to his father dated 2 August 1861 explained the reason. He had halted his experiments on coagulation to work on writing two chapters, "Amputation" and "On Æsthetics" (On anaesthetics) for the medical reference work System of Surgery by Timothy Holmes, published in four volumes in 1862. Chloroform was Lister's preferred anaesthetic. He wrote three papers for Holmes in 1861, 1870 and 1882 chapters. The science of anaesthesia was in its infancy when Lister had first recommended chloroform to Syme in 1855 and had continued to use it until the 1880s. His sister Isabella Sophie had first described its use to him in 1848 when she had a tooth pulled. He had further clinical experience using it on three patients who had tumours of the jaw, without complications in 1854. He had classed it along with alcohol and opium as a "specific irritant" in "On the early stages of imflammation". Lister preferred it, as it was safer to use in artificial light than ether, it protected the heart and blood vessels and as Lister believed gave the patient "mental tranquility" as it was the safest. In the 1871 edition, he reported there had been no deaths in Edinburgh or Glasgow infirmaries from chloroform, during the period between 1861 and 1870. Lister described how his assistant applied the chloroform onto a simple handkerchief, as a mask while he watched the patient's breathing. In 1870, he updated the chapter to state that he felt apprehension about using chloroform on the "aged and infirm". In the same edition he recommended nitrous oxide for tooth extraction and the use of ether to avoid vomiting after abdominal surgery. In the winter of 1873, the English medical journals reported that sulphuric ether should be used instead but Watson Cheyne stated there had been no deaths from chloroform during the winter of 1873. In 1880, the British Medical Association recommended the synthetic gas ethidene dichloride for clinical trials. On 14 November 1881, Paul Bert published the dose-response curve of chloroform but Lister believed that smaller doses would be sufficient to anaesthetize the patient. Starting in April 1882, Lister first conducted clinical research using ether and from July to November, lab experiments on chaffinches and then on himself and Agnes, to determine the correct dose. The 1882 chapter continued to recommend chloroform.

The chapter on amputation was much more technical than the anaesthesia chapter, for example describing the ways of cutting the skin to produce flaps to close over the wound. In the first edition, Lister examined the history of amputation from Hippocrates to Thomas Pridgin Teale, William Hey, François Chopart, Nikolay Pirogov and Dominique Jean Larrey and the discovery of the tourniquet by Etienne Morel. In the first edition, Lister devoted 7 pages to dressings, but by the third edition only a single sentence to recommend a dry dressing as opposed to the more common water dressing, where it was thought that water excluded the air. By the third edition, Lister focused on describing three innovative surgical techniques. The first was a method for amputation through the thigh that he developed between 1858 and 1860 that was a modification of Henry Douglas Carden 's technique for knee amputation. The thigh amputation was through the femoral condyles, in a circular fashion with a small posterior flap that enabled a neat scar.

The second technique was an aortic tourniquet for controlling blood flow in the abdominal aorta. The vessels of the aorta were too tough to close properly and ligatures either damaged the artery walls or caused premature death if left in too long. The third technique was a method of bloodless operation that he created in 1863–1864 by elevating a limb and quickly applying an india rubber tourniquet to stop limb circulation but it became unnecessary with the use of the Esmarch bandage. In 1859, he advocated for the use of silver wire sutures that had been invented by J. Marion Sims, but their use fell out of favour with the introduction of antiseptics.