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

by Lindsey Fitzharris

Like the inventor of Listerine, Robert Wood Johnson first became aware of antisepsis when he attended Lister’s lecture at the International Medical Congress in Philadelphia. Inspired by what he had heard that day, Johnson joined forces with his two brothers James and Edward, and founded a company to manufacture the first sterile surgical dressings and sutures mass-produced according to Lister’s methods. They named it Johnson & Johnson.

As the years passed, there was a gradual shift in medical procedure from antisepsis (germ killing) to asepsis (germ-free practices). The very theory on which Lister based his entire system seemed to demand that aseptic methods replace antisepsis. But he opposed this change because he felt asepsis—which required the scrupulous sterilization of everything within the patient’s vicinity before procedures commenced—was impractical if surgeons were to continue operating outside the controlled environment of a hospital.