Lister remembered reading that engineers at a sewage works in Carlisle had used carbolic acid to counteract the smell of rotting garbage and to render odorless nearby pastures that were irrigated with liquid waste. They had done this at the recommendation of Frederick Crace Calvert, an honorary professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution of Manchester, who was first introduced to the compound’s miraculous properties while studying in Paris. An unexpected benefit of the engineers’ efforts was that the carbolic acid also killed the protozoan parasites that had caused outbreaks of cattle
...more
