Joseph Lister

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Joseph Lister

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Joseph Lister (1827-1912)

Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister, OM, PC, PRS (5 April 1827 – 10 February 1912), ^[1] was a British surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, whose research into bacteriology and infection in wounds, raised his skillful operative technique, that was similar to his peers, to a new plane where his observations, deductions and practices revolutionised surgery throughout the world. ^[2]

Lister promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Lister successfully introduced carbolic acid (now known as phenol) to sterilise surgical instruments and to clean wounds.

Applying Louis Pasteur's advances in microbiology, Lister championed the use of carbolic acid as an antiseptic, so that it became the first widely used antiseptic in surgery. He first suspected it would prove an adequate disinfectant because it was used to ease the stench from fields irrigated with sewage waste. He presumed it was safe because fields treated with carbolic acid produced no apparent ill-effects on the livestock that later grazed upon them.

Lister's work led to a reduction in post-operative infections and made surgery safer for patients, distinguishing him as the " father of modern surgery".

Early life

Lister with fellow Residents at the Old Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, c. 1855 (Lister is in the front row with his hands clasped)

The widespread introduction of antiseptic surgical methods followed the publishing of Lister's Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery in 1867

Lister was born to a prosperous Quaker family in Upton, West Ham, Essex, then near but now in London[4], England. He was the second son of six siblings to gentleman scientist and wine merchant Joseph Jackson Lister and Isabella Harris. [5]

Education

At school, Lister became a fluent reader of French and German. A young Joseph Lister attended Benjamin Abbott's Isaac Brown Academy, a Quaker school in Hitchin in Hertfordshire. As a teenager, Lister attended Grove House School in Tottenham, studying mathematics, natural science, and languages.

Lister attended University College, London, [9][10] one of only a few institutions which accepted Quakers at that time.

Career and work:

Lister spraying phenol over patient

Joseph Lister c. 1855

While he was a professor of surgery at the University of Glasgow, Lister became aware of a paper published by the French chemist, Louis Pasteur, showing that food spoilage could occur under anaerobic conditions if micro-organisms were present. Pasteur suggested three methods to eliminate the micro-organisms responsible: filtration, exposure to heat, or exposure to solution/chemical solutions. Lister confirmed Pasteur's conclusions with his own experiments and decided to use his findings to develop antiseptic techniques for wounds. [16] As the first two methods suggested by Pasteur were unsuitable for the treatment of human tissue, Lister experimented with the third idea.

Therefore, Lister tested the results of spraying instruments, the surgical incisions, and dressings with a solution of carbolic acid. Lister found that the solution swabbed on wounds remarkably reduced the incidence of gangrene. [19]

He instructed surgeons under his responsibility to wear clean gloves and wash their hands before and after operations with 5% carbolic acid solutions. Instruments were also washed in the same solution and assistants sprayed the solution in the operating theatre. One of his additional suggestions was to stop using porous natural materials in manufacturing the handles of medical instruments. [22]

Lister left Glasgow University in 1869, being succeeded by Prof George Husband Baird MacLeod. [23] Lister then returned to Edinburgh as successor to Syme as Professor of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh and continued to develop improved methods of antisepsis and asepsis. Amongst those he worked with there, who helped him and his work, was the senior apothecary and later MD, Dr Alexander Gunn. Lister's fame had spread by then, and audiences of 400 often came to hear him lecture. As the germ theory of disease became more understood, it was realised that infection could be better avoided by preventing bacteria from getting into wounds in the first place. This led to the rise of aseptic surgery. On the hundredth anniversary of his death, in 2012, Lister was considered by most in the medical field as " The Father of Modern Surgery"

Death

Lister died on 10 February 1912 at his country home (now known as Coast House[38][39]) in Walmer, Kent at the age of 84. After a funeral service at Westminster Abbey, his body was buried at Hampstead Cemetery in London in a plot to the south-east of central chapel. References

Cartwright, Frederick F. " Joseph Lister". Encyclopæ dia Britannica. Retrieved 8 February 2018.

Ford, William W. (January 1928). " The Scientific Monthly". The Scientific Monthly. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 26 (1).

Pitt, Dennis; Aubin, Jean-Michel (1 October 2012). " Joseph Lister: father of modern surgery". Canadian Journal of Surgery. 55 (5): E8–E9. doi: 10. 1503/cjs. 007112. ISSN 0008-428X. PMC 3468637. PMID 22992425.

Cope, Zachary (1 April 1967). " Joseph Lister, 1827-1912". The British Medical Journal. 2 (5543): 7–8.

Barry, Rebecca Rego (2018). " From Barbers and Butchers to Modern Surgeons". Distillations. 4 (1): 40–43. Retrieved 11 July 2018.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: " Lister, Joseph Jackson". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

Clark, Paul F. (December 1920). " Joseph Lister, his Life and Work". The Scientific Monthly. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 11 (6): 518–539.

Allan Chapman (21 October 2016). Physicians, Plagues and Progress: The History of Western Medicine from Antiquity to Antibiotics. Lion Books. p. 376. ISBN 978-0-7459-7040-0. Retrieved 5 June 2020.

John Bankston (2004). Joseph Lister and the Story of Antiseptics (Uncharted, Unexplored, and Unexplained). Bear, Del: Mitchell Lane Publishers. ISBN 978-1-58415-262-0.

Lindsey Fitzharris (2017). The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine. New York: Scientific American: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 9780374117290.

" Sketch of Sir Joseph Lister". Popular Science Monthly. March 1898. Retrieved 14 May 2013.

" RMS notable members".

Ann Lamont (March 1992). " Joseph Lister: father of modern surgery". Creation. 14 (2): 48–51. Lister married Syme's daughter Agnes and became a member of the Episcopal church

Noble, Iris (1960). The Courage of Dr. Lister. New York: Julian Messner, Inc. pp. 39.

Millard, Candice (2011). Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 9780385526265.

Lister, Baron Joseph (1 August 2010). " The Classic: On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery". Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. 468 (8): 2012–2016. doi: 10. 1007/s11999-010-1320-x. ISSN 0009-921X. PMC 2895849. PMID 20361283.