Joseph Lister Biography

Joseph Lister was a British surgeon who was the founder of antiseptic medicine and a pioneer in preventive medicine. He is credited to have introduced the method of sterilizing surgical instruments with carbolic acid which greatly reduced the risk of post-operative infections in patients. Up until that time, it was generally believed that chemical damage from exposures to bad air was responsible for infections in wounds and doctors were not even required to wash their hands before performing surgeries. Lister read about the experiments in fermentation conducted by French chemist Louis Pasteur and conducted his own experiments to conclude that micro-organisms were responsible for the infections in patients. He set about trying to find an effective method of eliminating the micro-organisms by exposing them to strong chemicals. After extensive experimentation, he found an effective antiseptic in carbolic acid. He treated the surgical instruments and wounds of patients with the chemical and discovered that when the solution was swabbed on wounds, it remarkably reduced the incidence of gangrene. Excited by his findings, he published his results in ‘The Lancet’. He instructed other surgeons to wash their hands and instruments with 5% carbolic acid solutions before operations, and this dramatically brought down the mortality rates from infection. Hailed a hero for his significant discoveries, Lister won worldwide acclaim and was made a baron by Queen Victoria.