Cheyne, William Watson (1852-1932)

Australian-born British surgeon. He was assistant surgeon and later surgeon to King's College Hospital (1880-1917), before becoming a professor of surgery there (1891-1917). Cheyne was a staunch advocate of the antiseptic principles introduced by English surgeon Joseph Lister. His principal works include Antiseptic Surgery (1882), Tuberculous Diseases of Bones and Joints (1895), and the seven-volume Manual of Surgical Treatment (1899-1903), coauthored with F Burghard.

Cheyne was born at sea off Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. He graduated in medicine at Edinburgh University in 1875, and became house surgeon to Joseph Lister, first in Edinburgh and later at King's College Hospital, London. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1879, subsequently becoming Hunterian professor (1888-90), then president (1914-16); he was awarded the college's Lister Memorial Medal in 1924. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1894. He was made a baronet in 1908 on becoming surgeon-in-ordinary to King Edward VII. He was member of Parliament for the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews (1917) and for the Scottish universities (1918-22). Among his other publications are Suppuration and Septic Diseases (1889), Treatment of Wounds, Ulcers and Abscesses (1894), and Lister and his Achievement (1925).