薬殺刑
Christison was a strong opposer of women in the field of medicine, a view in Edinburgh eventually undermined by his colleague, Patrick Heron Watson's admission of women students to his extra mural surgery classes. A further (still controversial) proposal was his creation of a system of Lethal injection (through the discovery of Physostigmine in 1846) for human execution, in place of hanging. For various reasons, although this seems to pre-date its introduction into American use by 40 years, the method never appealed to British sensibilities.