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What I Know About Lister 's Early Life And The Degrees He Earned From His Educational Background

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Joseph Lister Research Paper

Imagine yourself living in the 1800s. Think of all of the inventions that made life easier, such as the telephone to communicate over long distances, or the typewriter to write formal letters to people. These were all important inventions that made life easier, but a biologist by the name of Joseph Lister had made some important discoveries in antiseptics that ended up saving the lives of people. In this paper, I will inform you about Lister’s early life and the degrees he earned from his educational background, his major contribution to the biological community and what people knew before his contribution, the scientists that inspired him and helped him, how knowledge of antiseptics has increased over time, …show more content…

Lister “believed that sepsis was caused by a pollen like dust” (Cartwright) and his goal was to try to eliminate contact from the pollen like dust from surgery procedures. He learned from Louis Pasteur that this pollen like dust was micro-organisms and that they caused infections in patients. Lister decided that he was going to “eliminate contact of micro-organisms by exposing them to strong chemicals” (Cartwright). He ended up “finding a chemical called carbolic acid, which had been used to clean sewers and now was being used as a wound dressing to cover the wound and reduce the rate of infection” (Wilson). “In 1865, he tried the carbolic acid by putting it on a serious wound of a young boy, and in six weeks, he was completely healed because there was no infection” (The Famous People). This result led to Lister instructing other surgeons to wash their hands and instruments with carbolic acid to promote cleanliness and prevent infection. Due to this practice, “from 1865 to 1869, surgical mortality fell from 45 to 15 percent” (Cartwright and Biography.com Editors). This statistic clearly indicates that the carbolic acid helps prevent infection and mortality and that Lister was correct in his instructing of others to wash their hands and instruments frequently. Before Lister came up with this discovery, people believed that “infection was spread from bad air in the environment” (Hagy). Because people believed that infection was spread

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