Royal Physician (Munk’s Roll)
Mentions in Memoirs: Folio 224
Mentions in Pocketbook: My correspondence
Lister’s great-uncle Matthew, also a physician, supported him in his studies at Cambridge.
Sir Matthew Lister did his undergraduate work at Oriel College, Oxford, and had his medical training at Basel University, which taught the new and still controversial ‘chemical medicine’ of Paracelsus. Sir Matthew was also a fellow of the College of Physicians and, along with William Harvey, served as a censor or examiner of new candidates. He eventually became a royal physician to James I and Charles I. Martin Lister secured his introduction to Robert Bruce, the Earl of Ailesbury, because of Sir Matthew; Lister’s memoirs record, ‘I made my reverence to my Lord of Alsbury, who was infinitely civil to me upon my Unkle Sr. Matth. Listers memory’.