Saving countless lives, the Lister way…

On March 16, 1867, Joseph Lister published a paper with results announcing his antiseptic system in The Lancet. What followed was a series of articles, On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery. With that, Lister laid the foundation for how surgeries are done, to this day…

Did you know that mortality rates from major operations were slashed from around 40% in the second half of the 19th Century, to less than 3% by the end of the first decade of the 20th Century? Current estimates of global mortality rate following major surgery still hovers around 1-4%, suggesting that the vast changes in the medical landscape over the past 120 years hasn’t had a big impact in this specific matter. The drastic reduction that took place in the half a century before that was mainly down to one person. That man was none other than British surgeon Joseph Lister.

The second son of Isabella Harris and Joseph Jackson Lister, Joseph Lister was lucky in that both his parents played an active role in his education. His father, a wine merchant who identified himself as an amateur microscopist and physicist, instructed him in natural history and the use of microscopes. 

The fact that his schooling took place in two institutions that emphasised more on natural history and science than most others of the time shaped his future. He was drawn to anatomy and had set his sights upon a surgical career even before he turned 16.

An excellent student, it was no surprise that Lister graduated with honours as a bachelor of medicine in 1852. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons the same year and became an assistant of James Syme – considered the finest surgical teacher of the time – during a visit to Edinburgh in 1853. Lister went on to marry Syme’s daughter Agnes (a botanist who also contributed immensely to Lister’s professional life in the form of an assistant) in April 1856 and was appointed surgeon to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary by October the same year. 

Elected Regius Professorship of Surgery at Glasgow University in 1860, he was appointed surgeon to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary the following year. Here, he was also in charge of wards in the newly built surgical block, which the managers hoped would greatly reduce hospital disease (now known as post-operative sepsis or surgical sepsis, it is a serious complication that takes place when disease-producing microorganisms enter the bloodstream after surgery). 

That, however, didn’t turn out to be the reality. Lister himself reported that in the five years from 1861-65, nearly half of his amputation cases died from sepsis in the Male Accident Ward. It was here that Lister began his experimentation with antisepsis. 

Rather than go with the popular concept of miasma – direct infection by bad air – that dominated the time, Lister formed theories of his own based on observation and experimentation. He suggested that sepsis was caused by pollen-like dust, and though there’s no evidence to suggest that he believed the dust to be living organisms, he was pretty close to the truth.