Lord Lister, the discoverer of antiseptic surgery / by C.J.S. Thompson.

  • Thompson, C. J. S. (Charles John Samuel), 1862-1943.
Date:
1934
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lord Lister, the discoverer of antiseptic surgery / by C.J.S. Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    surgical problem of the day, for in spite of open windows and strict attention to the ordinary rules of cleanliness, he was saddened and depressed by the many fatalities after operations. He was constantly haunted by the problem, What was to be done ? He began by insisting on the most scrupulous cleanli¬ ness in the wards, on the frequent washing of the hands of all those assisting at operations or engaged in the dressing of wounds ; while he also advocated the use of various deodorant lotions and recommended the frequent changing of dressings in all suppurating wounds. He impressed on his students the fact that the unbroken skin provided a protection that no dressing yet devised could with certainty imitate. The hospital diseases called septic, such as erysipe¬ las, pyaemia, septicaemia and hospital gangrene to which patients were especially liable after operations remained the nightmare of the surgeon. It is interesting to recall Lister’s first views on this problem and we find these embodied in his systematic lectures in Glasgow. In one he remarks on the awful frequency of gang- grene and his belief that it was brought about some¬ how or other by the impure state of the atmosphere, produced by the overcrowding of patients with decomposing sores. He noted that however crowded the patients might be in medical wards, if there happened to be an ulcer, it never became affected with hospital gangrene. He instanced a case of a man admitted with the disease who had infected the patients in the beds adjacent to him. He consequently assumed with much reason, that the pollution of the atmosphere was the chief thing to be avoided. In his ward he determined to allot more space to each bed while enforcing the strictest cleanliness, but much remained to be done at a time when a couple of jugs and basins and a few towels were thought suffi¬ cient for the ablutions of the staff, and nothing but soap and water, with perhaps a few drops of Condy’s