Joseph Lister - Top Surgeons - Best Surgeons

Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, OM, FRS (5 April 1827 � 10 February 1912) was an English surgeon who promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He successfully introduced carbolic acid (phenol) to sterilize surgical instruments and to clean wounds.

Joseph Lister came from a prosperous Quaker home in Upton, Essex, a son of Joseph Jackson Lister, the pioneer of the compound microscope.

At Quaker schools he became fluent in French and German which were, serendipitously, also the leading languages of medical research[1]. He attended the University of London, one of only a few institutions which was open to Quakers at that time. He initially studied the Arts but at the age of 25 he graduated with honours as Bachelor of Medicine and entered the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1854, Lister became both first assistant to and friend of surgeon James Syme at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He subsequently left the Quakers, joined the Scottish Episcopal Church and eventually married Syme's daughter Agnes[2]. For their honeymoon they spent 3 months visiting leading medical centres (Hospitals and Universities) in France and Germany, by this time Agnes was enamored of medical research and partnered him in the laboratory for the rest of his life.

After six years he earned a professorship of surgery at the University of Glasgow. At the time the usual explanation for wound infection was that the exposed tissues were damaged by chemicals in the air or via a stinking "miasma" in the air. The sick wards actually smelled bad, not due to a "miasma" but due to the rotting of wounds. Hospital wards were occasionally aired out at midday, but Florence Nightingale's doctrine of fresh air was still seen as science fiction. Facilities for washing hands or the patient's wounds did not exist and it was even considered unnecessary for the surgeon to wash his hands before he saw a patient. The work of Ignaz Semmelweis and Oliver Wendell Holmes were not heeded.

Lister became aware of a paper published (in French) by the French chemist Louis Pasteur which showed that rotting and fermentation could occur without any oxygen if micro-organisms were present. Lister confirmed this with his own experiments. If micro-organisms were causing gangrene, the problem was how to get rid of them. Pasteur suggested three methods: to filter them out, to heat them up, or expose them to chemical solutions. The first two were inappropriate in a human wound so Lister experimented with the third.