Joseph Lister

Joseph Lister, later Baron Lister of Lyme Regis, was born on 5 April 1827 in Upton, Essex, England, and died on 10 February 1912 in Walmer, Kent. He earned his medical degree in 1852 and became an assistant to James Syme, the leading surgical teacher of the day. Appointed surgeon to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1861, Lister found that roughly 45 to 50 percent of amputation patients died of sepsis, or wound infection. He first suspected airborne dust as the cause, but in 1865, on learning of Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease, he began applying carbolic acid to sterilize surgical instruments, clean wounds, and disinfect the operating air. Within four years his ward's post-operative mortality rate had fallen from around 45 percent to about 15 percent. In 1897 he became the first British surgeon elevated to the peerage. His method, now called antisepsis, is credited with making modern surgery survivable.