Tag Archives: Joseph Lister

Originally published in “The Outside World” A General History for Standard VI., The last hundred years have seen great progress in the fight against disease. Half a century before laughing gas was made of use to ease pain, it had been discovered by SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, but his discovery had not been practically applied. The successful introduction of anaesthetics for …

Joseph Lister was a British surgeon that pioneered the idea of sterile surgery, based on the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and his investigation of microbes as described in the germ theory. The idea that microbes played a key role in causing infection, or “putrefaction” as Pasteur referred to it, was still not widely accepted in the medical world and the …