A pioneer in two worlds: Thomas Keith (1827-1895) photographer and surgeon

Thomas Keith, an Edinburgh surgeon, was an early and successful exponent of the operation of ovariotomy (ovarian cystectomy). He published detailed accounts of all of the patients on whom he carried out this procedure and his published success rate proved to be amongst the best in the world. The leading American surgeon J Marion Sims, who visited Keith to determine the reasons for this success, concluded that Keith's achievement resulted from meticulous attention to detail and his emphasis on the cleanliness of the instruments and the operating field, before this was generally adopted. His friendship with Joseph Lister led to his early use of Listerian antisepsis, which further improved these results. Yet, his medical colleagues and his obituarists seemed unaware of his other significant pioneering contribution, as a gifted photographer and pioneer of the waxed paper technique of photographic processing. That same attention to detail resulted in photographs of the highest quality whose significance has since been appreciated by photographic historians.