Joseph Lister: Father of Modern Medicine

 

Before Lister, amputation was the go-to procedure for wounded or diseased limbs. Rather than opening bodily cavities to remove infection, surgeons simply cut off the limb altogether. Because Civil War medicine was so brutal compared to today's medicine, these amputations often resulted in death (38). Upset by the disturbingly casualty rates of these procedures, Lister, known as the father of modern medicine, founded the antiseptic technique (39).

 

Using Louis Pasteur's work with germs, Lister was able to conclude that tissue inflammation was caused by germs entering a wound. Because Pasteur's method of heat sterilization could not be applied to living organisms, Lister decided to look for a chemical capable of killing these infection-causing germs. Eventually, Lister was successful in using carbolic acid to wounds, and he found that this dramatically lowered infection rates when applied to compound fractures. Although this treatment was not used for very long, it set a precedent for future antiseptic techniques (40).