Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine
UK charitable organization
The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, informally known as the Lister Institute, was established as a research institute (the British Institute of Preventive Medicine) in 1891, with bacteriologist Marc Armand Ruffer as its first director, using a grant of £250,000 from Edward Cecil Guinness of the Guinness family. It had premises in Chelsea, London; Sudbury, Suffolk; and Elstree, Hertfordshire, England. It was the first medical research charity in the United Kingdom. It was renamed the Jenner Institute (after Edward Jenner, the pioneer of smallpox vaccine) in 1898 and then, in 1903, as the Lister Institute in honour of the great surgeon and medical pioneer, Dr Joseph Lister. In 1905, the institute became a school of the University of London.
History
The early history of the Lister Institute could best be described as chequered. It began with French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur in 1880 when two rabid dogs were brought to Pasteur for examination and it was further two years before Pasteur began to methodically study the disease. By 1885, Pasteur had developed the Rabies vaccine and had tested it on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, on 6 July 1885, after the boy was badly mauled by a rabid dog. Meister recovered, proving the effectiveness of said vaccine.
In April 1886, the British government formed a commission presided by James Paget to enquire about the subject.
“Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine” enters the record as uK charitable organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lister, Institute and Preventive can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1149028. VIAF identifies the subject as 149549760. The Library of Congress control number is nr98006264. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1891, 1898, 1903 and 1905.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.