A Hungarian doctor named lgnaz Semmelweis once asked the medical students at Vienna’s maternity hospital to disinfect their hands. He had proved that this made their presence in labour rooms less dangerous. But this offended his superiors and he was dismissed from service. This happened in 1849.
The indifferent attitude towards disinfecting continued well after 1864 when Louis Pasteur’s germ theory was accepted in France. Most surgeons continued operating without even changing into clean clothes.
However, things began to change in 1867 when Joseph Lister published the paper “Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery”. Lister was inspired by Louis Pasteur’s germ theory of putrefaction. He advocated the use of carbolic acid, which is a powerful germ killer to disinfect. He had already begun putting this into practice in his operating theatres and on to dressings by 1865. Lister’s introduction of antiseptic surgical methods paved the way for modern sterile surgery.
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