Inflammation, suppuration, putrefaction, fermentation: Joseph Lister's microbiology

Abstract

This paper focuses on Lister's inaugural lecture at King's College, London, in October 1877. As the new Professor of Clinical Surgery, Lister had much to report, including impressively high survival rates from complex operations previously regarded as foolhardy. Instead, he chose to address the processes of fermentation in wine, blood and milk. His reasons are not obvious to a modern audience, just as they probably were not to those who heard him in the Great Hall at King's. Having brought microbiological apparatus from his laboratory to the lecture theatre and presented proof of bacterial variety and specificity, Lister publicly demonstrated the creation of the first pure bacterial culture in the history of microbiology. It was an ingenious and well-thought-out strategy designed to generate a frame of mind among his new colleagues and future students, receptive to the causative role of bacteria in septic diseases. His timing was impeccable.