Joseph Lister: Father Of Modern Surgery Essay

Superior Essays
I walk down a narrow hallway into the microbiology laboratory on my college campus. I am met outside of the door by the professor. He proceeds to set the guidelines for proper safety in the lab. The number one thing he says and repeats is the concept of asepsis or the absence of microorganisms. After I finally get the okay to walk through the door, ditching my things there as I continue into the lab. Sanitization of your hands and the lab bench are the priority, immediately followed by placing sterile gloves and a lab coat on. Why is this sterilization necessary? Microorganisms, or microbes, are everywhere and can/will contaminate everything. But what is the use of this sterilization and aseptic technique outside of the microbiology lab? Why should I care about aseptic technique at all? Aseptic technique originated in the microbiology and medical labs. In the present, this technique is used in almost every aspect of our germ conscious lives. Think about the amount of tiny organisms in the soil where your canned food products are grown. Those tiny organisms, many harmless, are transferred directly to your plate from the ground without proper asepsis. Asepsis is the ridding of any microorganisms. (Microorganisms are microscopic living entities, many being one millionth of a meter in size.) It wasn’t that long ago when the existence of microbes was unknown. Before the known existence of microorganisms the need and knowledge for asepsis was absent. Due to this absence, the world also did not understand how diseases or infections occurred. According to Jessney of the Hull York Medical School it was Joseph Lister who first brought to attention the need for sterilization in the hosipital, “At the time of Lister’s medical practice, as many as 80% of all operations were followed by hospital gangrene, and almost one half of all patients died after a major operation. Many were reluctant to accept the role of infection with most believing that the deaths were inevitable or coincidental” (Jessney 107). The idea behind infection was to punish the patient for bad behavior. This was believed up until the mid to late 1800s when microbes were discovered to cause disease by Louis Pasteur and the Germ theory of disease (Tortora 8). Pasteur began to link disease and microbes together when he was asked to help figure out the reason behind wine and beer souring during travel. The common belief behind the fermentation of the alcohol was the conversion of sugar by air. He made the discovery of yeast causing the fermentation while bacteria caused the souring. Pasteur decided to heat the beer and wine to kill of the bacteria in order to stop any spoilage (Tortora 9). As described above, Joseph Lister, named the father of modern surgery by Dennis Pitt MD in his article titled “Joseph Lister: Father of Modern Surgery” published in the Canadian Journal of Surgery (2012), accumulated Pasteur’s ideas of the germ theory (8). …show more content…
He also began to notice a number of physicians who passed on infection to their patients after surgery. Lister used Pasteur’s ideas, combined with his own to form the aseptic technique. Lister knew about phenol being used as a disinfectant to kill bacteria, so he began to use it as a wound cleanser as well as to clean his surgical instruments. Jessney noted that, “Surgical instruments were never cleaned thoroughly with anything more than a wipe. Patients were seldom washed of dirt and surgeons rarely washed their hands. For some, bloodstains were seen as trophies and a mark of prestige” (107). The invention of this technique by Lister changed the spread of infection within the hospital. According to Dennis Pitt MD, “Lister changed the treatment of compound fractures from amputation to limb preservation and opened the way for abdominal and other intracavity surgery” (8). Aseptic technique single handedly was able to help the world with the fight of disease and spread of infection. The sheer amount of lives saved since then is astonishing. The use of aseptic technique in the doctor’s office is most evident and visible in everyday life. As I walk into the doctor’s office, I sit on a new bed cover where the previous extremely ill patient before me sat. I am not at risk of their illness. In past

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