... a British surgeon, doubted this explanation. For many years he had explored the inflammation of wounds, at the Glasgow infirmary. These observations had led him to considered that infection was not due to bad air alone, and that 'wound sepsis' was a form of decomposition. When the Regius Professorship of Surgery at Glasgow University fell vacant in 1859 Lister was selected from severn candidates. In August 1861 he was appointed surgeon at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and put in charge of its new surgical building. The hope was that the new building would decrease the number of deaths caused by what was then called hospital disease (now known as operative sepsis). This proved a vain hope when Lister reported that between 45 and 50 percent of his amputation cases died from sepsis between 1861 and 1865 in his Male Accident Ward. It was in this ward that Lister began his ...

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