A Man Called Lister

Abstract

Lister has gone down in history as the father of antiseptic surgery. Following Pasteur’s ideas, Lister looked for a chemical substance with which to annihilate germs. After several tests he arrived at carbolic acid (today called phenol), a compound extracted from creosote that at that time was used to prevent the rotting of railway sleepers. In 1865 and after some dubious beginnings, he for the first time managed to heal the open fracture in the leg of a child hit by a car without infection. More than a century and a half later, the methods and substances have changed. From today’s perspective, such generous use of the corrosive and toxic phenol, which today is handled with special care in laboratories, may be surprising. But today we are left with Lister’s revolutionary idea that drew the line between ancient and modern surgery.