Timelines: 1867

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Inventing sterilization

While serving as a professor of surgery at the University of Glasgow, Scottish physician Joseph Lister publishes a series of landmark papers on the "Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery" in the British Medical Journal. Lister has read a report by Louis Pasteur on rotting and fermentation under anaerobic conditions in the presence of microorganisms. He becomes convinced that the formation of pus in surgical wounds is due to bacterial infection, and that cleanliness in operating theatres is a key to improved clinical outcomes.

Pasteur's report has enumerated techniques for eliminating bugs that may be associated with gangrene – filtration, heat, and chemical treatment. Lister begins experimenting with chemicals that might prevent infection during surgery. He discovers that the treatment of wounds with carbolic acid served the purpose. Encouraged, he sets out to devise techniques for sterilizing instruments and operating environments. His innovations include a device for spraying a carbolic acid mist in operating rooms.

Lister's articles summarize his findings: "The material which I have employed is carbolic or phenic acid, a volatile organic compound, which appears to exercise a peculiarly destructive influence upon low forms of life, and hence is the most powerful antiseptic with which we are presently acquainted."

Lister's work marks a turning point in modern medicine – it transforms the craft of surgery on the basis of scientific experimentation and the emerging germ theory of disease. In 1879, an antiseptic mouthwash is named for Lister. The food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes also bears his name.

Lister

Lister's carbolic acid sprayer

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Timelines: 1867

Prev : Next Antiseptic surgery