High on Bliss’s list of suspect medical theories was Joseph Lister’s antisepsis—a fact that would surprise no one less than Lister himself. “I had a taste of what has been alas! experienced so largely by our profession,” he had lamented years earlier, “how ignorant prejudice with good intentions may obstruct legitimate scientific inquiry.” This prejudice persisted despite the fact that, in the sixteen years since Lister had introduced it, antisepsis had fundamentally changed the way British and European doctors practiced medicine, and had saved countless lives. In his own hospital in London,
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