Glasgow keeps it clean

Would you agree to an operation knowing your surgeon wouldn’t clean his hands or instruments first?

Until Joseph Lister’s experimentations with antiseptics in the 1860s, this was common practice. Most medical experts of the day believed infection was caused by bad air.

Lister was interested in how wounds healed. As he conducted his research, he began to suspect that infection might be caused by a pollen-like dust. At the same time, French bacteriologist Louis Pasteur was proposing that fermentation and disease were caused by microorganisms. Once Lister became aware of Pasteur’s theories, he began to experiment with ways of getting rid of these microorganisms in human wounds.

Working as the Regius Professor of Surgery at the University of Glasgow, Lister experimented with swabbing wounds and instruments with solutions of carbolic acid. He also advised surgeons to wash their hands before and after operations with this solution, and concluded that medical instruments should not be made from porous materials.

Between 1865 and 1869, surgical mortality in his Male Accident Ward fell from 45 to 15 percent. Modern antiseptic surgery had been born.

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