Surgeon and anatomist. Born at Stillington, Durham, the third son of Thomas Carlisle and his first wife Barbara (d. 1768). Studied medicine in York, Durham and London, and was appointed surgeon to the Westminster Hospital in 1793. He married Martha Symmons in 1800 and in the same year was one of the founding members of the Royal College of Surgeons, serving as its president in 1829 and 1839. He moved in metropolitan literary and scientific circles, attending Mary Wollstonecraft on her death-bed in 1797. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1804, held the post of Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy from 1808 and later that of surgeon-extraordinary to the Prince Regent. Carlisle was knighted when George IV acceded to the throne. Carlisle and Southey met in c. 1795, probably through their mutual friend Grosvenor Charles Bedford. In c. 1798 Carlisle, Southey and John May collaborated on a scheme for a convalescent asylum to assist the poor after their discharge from hospital. Carlisle attended Southey’s mother in her last illness in 1801–1802, but after Southey settled in Keswick the two men saw much less of each other. Although Carlisle and Southey corresponded, their letters to one another seem not to have survived.