SO FAR THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY seemed reluctant to accept the idea that microscopic organisms caused disease. As one of Lister’s assistants astutely observed: “A new and great scientific discovery is always apt to leave in its trail many casualties among the reputations of those who have been champions of an older method. It is hard for them to forgive the man whose work has rendered their own of no account.” If it was difficult for an older surgeon to “unlearn” decades of orthodoxy, Lister reasoned it would be a lot easier to convert the incoming students to his theories and methods.
