Joseph Lister
Born in 1827 Essex England, Joseph Lister became house surgeon at University College Hospital, before his fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons, all at a time when surgery of any kind was about to be banned due to egregious mortality rates caused by infection and gangrene. Focusing his research on inflammation, Lister wrote fifteen papers on how inflammation caused an overall loss of vitality in muscles and eyes, rendering tissues and blood vessels helpless, in his words, “as if they were dead.”
Early Promotions
Appointed Regius Professor of Surgery at the University of Glasgow—at 33 years of age—and while Girolamo Fracastoro had theorized that microscopic germs may well be the vector of disease as far back as 1546, surgical practice during Lister’s time failed to make the connection. Tackling the issue head on, Lister’s genius was to employ Louis Pasteur’s work on the etiology of fermentation as a causal link to dramatically-high surgical infection rates, all at a time when bed linens and lab coats were rarely laundered between patients, while surgical instruments were wiped clean rather than sterilized beyond a lackadaisical cleansing with a less than sterile cloth.
Old School Medicine
Believing that surgical infections arose from gaseous miasmas emitting from the wound itself—a lasting belief among medical practitioners as far back as Galen’s practice from 162 to 203 AD—after reading about how creosote was used to disinfect sewage, Lister applied and later misted carbolic acid compounds on surgical wounds and surgical theaters, achieving a remarkable drop in infection rates in patients undergoing simple or compound bone fracture repairs.
Stubborn Resistance to Change
Publishing two papers in Lancet in 1867, noting a zero incidence of septicemia, gangrene or skin infections over a nine-month study period, skepticism and outright opposition to his findings remained legendary in the annals medical history, until Germany led the way in adopting Lister’s antiseptic techniques, followed by the United States, France and lastly Great Britain. Although asepsis and sterile technique have replaced Lister’s original principles of antisepsis, Lister’s groundbreaking application of germ theory forever altered the outcome for a staggering 310 million worldwide surgeries performed each and every year, making Joseph Lister, a literal rock star in surgical suites everywhere.