The Importance of Lister’s Experiments With Anti Septic in the Development of Safer Surgery

The Importance of Lister’s Experiments With Anti Septic in the Development of Safer Surgery

As well as anaesthetics, antiseptics were the most important discovery

of the 19th century in the medical profession. After May 16th 1867,

when Lister published his results of using his treatments on eleven

compound fracture cases, antiseptics were used much more and the

amount of deaths from sepsis decreased dramatically. Lister’s results

showed that eight out of the eleven patients he treated with a

compound fracture made a full recovery. Of these eleven, eight made

uneventful recoveries. Two had been attacked by hospital disease but

both recovered and one patient died but his death was caused by the

broken bone end piercing an artery and was not due to sepsis. This was

a record of success never before attained in this type of injury. His

results showed how much of an impact using antiseptics had. These

results also showed that this was the way forward in medicine and this

great improvement and Lister’s findings helped to save lives and lower

the death rate by an astonishing amount.

Because of the research that Lister did, it allowed other people to

experiment and try out new ways to improve Lister’s methods further.

By the end of the century, a new type of surgery was being used called

aseptic. This involved making sure germs couldn’t get into the

operating theatre as well as not being on the equipment and doctor or

surgeon. This meant that they did not have to be removed as they were

not there in the first place. Lister’s work was crucially important as

he was the first to understand the need to prevent infection from

airborne germs and h...

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contributed for the lack of efficiency in hospitals at this time.

Lister and Florence Nightingale helped to change this and showed

people how important cleanliness and fighting germs was. Florence

Nightingale also helped to make nursing into a respectable profession

and showed how essential nurses were to the recovery of patients. She

cleaned up hospitals and made sure doctors and nurses were on good

terms to ensure a healthy relationship and efficient work. She also

gave nurses an education to they were medically knowledgeable so as to

care for the patient properly. Thanks to the help of James Simpson,

surgery was painless and the recovery after was improved. Thanks to

Pasteur and Koch, immunisation became popular and led to the

advancements and discoveries of many of today’s immunisations to

numerous diseases.