Not very long ago, you could die from a broken arm--and many did. That all changed with an idea we think of as pretty basic today: surgery needs to be sterile. On this day in 1867, Joseph Lister ...

Joseph Lister was born in 1827, ... He then took further steps including hand washing, sterilization of instruments and spraying carbolic acid in the operating room during surgery.

Joseph Lister came of age as surgery was being transformed. With the invention of anesthesia, operations could move beyond two-minute leg amputations that occasionally lopped off a testicle in ...

During the spring of 1867, Joseph Lister published a series of articles in The Lancet outlining medical sterilization protocols that became the foundation of contemporary antiseptic surgical practice.

Years before, Joseph Lister had discovered that sterilization could prevent fatal infection. But the doctors attending Garfield either hadn’t read Lister’s work or ignored it, and sepsis and ...

Before antiseptics were invented, a trip to the hospital might kill you – even if you survived the surgery. A handful of visionary doctors realised what the cause was.

1867: British surgeon Joseph Lister performs the first surgery under antiseptic conditions. Death rates would plummet, but you should still be thankful you were born in the 20th century and not ...