Lister Revisited: Surgical Antisepsis and Asepsis

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Abstract
Perhaps the greatest single advance in the history of surgery, aseptic wound management, was conceived and advocated decades before bacteria were conclusively implicated in the genesis of wound suppuration and even before contagion was generally accepted. Although it was promulgated in the 1840's by Ignaz Semmelweis in Europe and Oliver Wendell Holmes in this country against bitter opposition, wide-scale acceptance awaited Joseph Lister's epochal studies of prevention of surgical-wound infection between 1865 and 1891.1 Noteworthy is the fact that Lister's enormous impact derived from his empiric and indomitable belief in chemical antisepsis (i.e., "against sepsis"). Initially applying compresses saturated in . . .