The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

by Lindsey Fitzharris

Pasteur believed that putrefaction, like fermentation, was also caused by the growth of minute microorganisms that were carried through the air by dust.

Pasteur was not a physician, a point he lamented as his research into the matter progressed: “How I wish I had … the special knowledge I need to launch myself wholeheartedly into the experimental study of one of the contagious diseases.”

Like Wells, Lister took away from Pasteur’s work the idea that it wasn’t the air as such but its constituent of microbial life that was the source of hospital infection.

Lister came to the vital realization that he couldn’t prevent a wound from having contact with germs in the atmosphere. So he turned his attention to finding a means of destroying microorganisms within the wound itself, before infection could set in.

Pasteur had conducted a number of experiments that demonstrated that germs could be destroyed in three ways: by heat, by filtration, or by antiseptics. Lister ruled out the first two because neither were applicable to the treatment of wounds.

Unfortunately, while blood poisoning is far more dangerous than inflammation, the medical journal got it fundamentally wrong: inflammation accompanies suppuration, which is often a symptom of blood poisoning and septicemia.

He turned first to one of the most popular substances at this time, called Condy’s fluid, or potassium permanganate, which was also used as a flash powder by early photographers.

Carbolic acid, also known as phenol, is a derivative of coal tar.

In March 1865, he carried out an excision of caries (decaying bone) from a patient’s wrist at the Royal Infirmary. Afterward, he carefully washed the wound with carbolic acid, hoping it would debride it of any contaminants. Much to his dismay, infection set in, and Lister was forced to admit that the trial had been a failure.