5th April: Sir Joseph Lister's birthday

The "father of modern surgery", Sir Joseph Lister, was born on this date in 1827.

1. He was born in West Ham, then a part of Essex, now a part of East London. His family were Quakers, and his father was a scientist too - he was a pioneer of microscope lenses.
2. The school Joseph attended has been converted into a pub, called the Lord Lister. At the time Joseph was there, it was Benjamin Abbott's Isaac Brown Academy, a Quaker school in Hitchin. There weren't many universities back then which would admit Quakers. University College London was one of them, so that is where Lister studied. His first degree wasn't in medicine, though - it was in botany.
3. By the age of 26, though, Lister was committed to surgery. He had an honours degree in medicine and had entered the Royal College of Surgeons. He went to Edinburgh where he got a job as assistant to an older surgeon called James Syme. Syme had quite an influence on Lister. They became friends, and Lister married Symes' daughter, Agnes. He also left the Quakers for the Scottish Episcopal Church - whether that was due to Symes or his daughter I don't know.
4. Agnes was as interested in surgery and medical research, too. They spent their honeymoon in France and Germany - visiting medical institutes. Agnes became his lab assistant and they worked in partnership for the rest of his career. The couple rarely took any holidays. Sadly, when they went to Italy in 1893 Agnes died. After that, Lister lost his interest in research and writing and he retired from practice.
5. Surgery at that time was carried out in extremely unsanitary conditions. Hand washing facilities weren't even available for surgeons. As you can imagine, infections were rife. Doctor's believed infections were caused by "bad air" and that the remedy was simply airing the ward. Lister's research brought to his attention a paper on food spoilage by one Louis Pasteur. The paper said food would go off even if it was kept in anaerobic conditions, ie. no air. Filtration, heat and chemical solutions would get rid of the micro-organisms responsible. Lister did some experiments of his own and found that Pasteur was right.
6. The only practical way to apply the idea to human tissue was a chemical solution. The substance Lister chose to try was carbolic acid. Carbolic acid was used to remove the smell of sewage from fields irrigated with sewage waste, which was what made Lister think it was killing germs. Also, livestock that grazed in those fields afterwards suffered no ill effects, which told Lister it was safe. He tried spraying surgical instruments with it, as well as applying it to wounds. Sure enough, using these methods reduced the incidence of gangrene. He began telling his surgeons to wash their hands in carbolic acid solutions and to wear clean gloves. He also suggested that porous materials shouldn't be used for the handles of surgical instruments.
7. Antiseptics may be his most famous contribution to the field of surgery, but it wasn't the only one. He also developed a method of repairing kneecaps with metal wire and improved the technique of mastectomy.
8. King Edward VII believed that Lister saved his life when he went down with appendicitis two days before his coronation. Lister was retired by then, but given the importance of the patient and the risks involved, the surgeons made sure they consulted Lister first. Lister advised them of the latest surgical methods, which they followed, and the King survived.
9. Previously, Queen Victoria had made Lister Baronet, of Park Crescent in the Parish of St Marylebone, and later Baron Lister, of Lyme Regis, Dorset. Both the baronetcy and barony became extinct on his death.
10. The micro-organism genus Listeria was named after him, and so was the mouthwash, Listerine, still used today.

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