Concepts
Antisepsis
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Antisepsis is the practice of destroying or inhibiting disease-causing microorganisms on living tissue and surgical equipment to prevent infection, distinct from the later practice of asepsis, which keeps a surgical environment free of microorganisms from the start rather than treating them once present. Joseph Lister introduced antiseptic surgical technique at Glasgow Royal Infirmary from 1865, using carbolic acid on instruments, wounds and the operating air after learning of Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease, and cut his ward's post-operative mortality sharply within a few years. Nearly two decades earlier, Ignaz Semmelweis, already recorded on this atlas, had reached a strikingly similar practical conclusion at Vienna General Hospital without any germ theory to explain it, ordering doctors to wash their hands in chlorinated lime between autopsies and childbirth deliveries, with equally dramatic results; his findings were largely rejected in his own lifetime, in part for lacking the explanation germ theory would only later supply.
Facts
Disputed
Proposed ByJoseph Lister and Ignaz Semmelweis 1 Lister is generally credited with founding antisepsis as a named surgical practice, since he adopted carbolic acid specifically after learning of Pasteur's germ theory in 1865 and published his method for other surgeons to follow. Ignaz Semmelweis reached the same practical conclusion, that something transmitted on unwashed hands caused fatal infection, at Vienna General Hospital in 1847, nearly two decades before Lister and with no germ theory available to explain why it worked; his results were as dramatic as Lister's but were largely dismissed by his contemporaries for lacking that explanation, and he received little credit in his own lifetime. This atlas records both as originators of the underlying practice rather than resolving which of them the label properly belongs to. Proposed Year Cross-Tradition Connections
Proposed By
Why this is disputed. Semmelweis reached the same practical hand-hygiene conclusion at Vienna General Hospital in 1847, nearly two decades before Lister and with no germ theory available yet to explain why it worked; his results were largely rejected in his own lifetime.
Studied In
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.