Joseph Lister father of antiseptic surgery

Joseph Lister father of antiseptic surgery

who is joseph lister?

Lister now began to clean wounds and dress them using a solution of carbolic acid

By the middle of the nineteenth century, post-operative sepsis infection accounted for the death of almost half of the patients undergoing major surgery. A common report by surgeons was: operation successfully but the patient died.

In the previous year Lister had heard that 'carbolic acid' was being used to treat sewage in Carlise, and that fields treated with the affluent were freed of a parasite causing disease in cattle.

Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, doubted this explanation. For many years he had explored the inflammation of wounds, at the Glasgow infirmary. These observations had led him to considered that infection was not due to bad air alone, and that 'wound sepsis' was a form of decomposition.