Born at 2 Rodney Street, Liverpool, the house of his father, Robert Bickersteth, FRCS (qv). He entered the Liverpool School of Medicine in 1845 and later studied in Edinburgh and at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, visiting also Dublin and Paris before qualifying as MRCS. At Edinburgh he was House Surgeon under Syme and met Lister and Charles Murchison as fellow-students. He also acted as House Surgeon at the Liverpool Infirmary. He began to practise at Liverpool in 1852, and in 1856 succeeded his father as Surgeon to the Infirmary. Rapidly gaining a large surgical practice, he started a private Nursing Home in 1857. As a teacher of clinical and systematic surgery, his classes were well attended to the last. After thirty-two years on the active staff he was elected Consulting Surgeon in 1888. A member of the Hospital Committee, he became President of the Infirmary in 1904, residing at Craig y Don, Anglesea. After a short period of failing health he died in the family house in Rodney Street, Liverpool, on March 7th, 1908, leaving property to the value of £330,000, including £10,000 as a legacy towards the erection of a new Out-patient Department. He married Anne, sister of Charles Murchison his fellow-student in Edinburgh, who survived him together with three daughters and two sons; one, Robert Alexander Bickersteth (qv), followed on as Surgeon to the Infirmary. Bickersteth’s distinction as a surgeon was recognized by his election to the Fellowship of the College on April 10th, 1879. Later he was President of the Surgical Section at the Liverpool Meeting of the British Medical Association. He made a most valuable and timely contribution to surgery when Lister in 1869 published his “Antiseptic Method of Treating Compound Fracture and the Use of Catgut rendered Aseptic by Carbolic Acid as Ligatures”. Lister as a young Professor in Glasgow had to obtain a hearing in the face of the prejudices of senior surgeons. Bickersteth at once acted in support of Lister, whom he had known as a fellow-student in Edinburgh, by publishing “Remarks on the Antiseptic Treatment of Wounds” in the Lancet. Shortly before there had appeared a letter by Lister objecting to a report by Paget. Paget had first applied collodion over the wound made by a compound fracture, and twelve hours later Lister’s carbolized putty, and had concluded that it ‘certainly did no good’. Lister objected first to the primary collodionizing and secondly to the delay in applying the antiseptic. Bickersteth began his paper “The Editorial Remarks regarding the antiseptic treatment of wounds contained in a recent number of the *Lancet*, in which comment is made on the discrepancy of the results obtained by Mr Lister and by other surgeons induces me to notice briefly the result of my personal experience.” He went on to relate Case I Male, 32. Aneurysm of the right common carotid near its bifurcation. A swelling had been first noticed a year before; three weeks previously there had been a sudden increase. The aneurysm over¬lapped the angle upon the mandible and extended down the neck to 1½ inches from the top of the sternum. On April 6th the right carotid was tied about 1½ inches above the sternum where the vessel had become considerably dilated, catgut prepared by Lister’s method being used. There was primary union and the man left the Infirmary five weeks later. Case II Male, 30. Aneurysm of the right external iliac 16 weeks before, after a strain in the groin, a swelling the size of a hen’s egg had appeared immediately above Poupart’s ligament. The external iliac artery was ligatured on the same day immediately after Case I. There was slight superficial suppuration, but the patient left the Infirmary well, and with no sign of the swelling, on May 15th. Subsequently he described two cases, upon which operation had been previously impracticable or inadvisable, namely, the removal of a loose cartilage from the knee-joint, twice on the same patient, and excision of a compound palmar ganglion. In both instances there was good healing. The hand had previously become useless; the patient was discharged “with almost perfect use of the hand!” Two instances of suppuration in the knee-joint were washed out with carbolic acid lotions, and healed. Previously, the limbs would have been amputated. Publications: “Remarks on the Antiseptic Treatment of Wounds.” – *Lancet*, 1869, i, 743, 811; 1870, ii, 6. Article in *Liverpool Med. and Surg. Rep.*, 1870, iv, 99.