His reports in The Lancet might not have been enough to convince some surgeons of the validity of the germ theory, but his students saw with their own eyes the antiseptic system working every time they accompanied him onto the wards. If seeing was believing, Lister was creating a group of disciples: men who would graduate and spread his ideas beyond the narrow confines of the university. His followers, who later became known as the “Listerians,” soon came to dominate the institutions and ideology of British surgery, spreading the doctrine of antisepsis with a reverential devotion.
