01/09/2026
For this month's , we're learning more about notable surgeons who were born in the month of January ⛄
𝗝𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗽𝗵 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 (𝗕𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝗝𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝟱, 𝟭𝟴𝟮𝟳)
Joseph Lister was born at a time when surgery was often more dangerous than the disease itself. Operating rooms were crowded, bloodstained, and unsterilized. Surgeons moved from patient to patient without washing their hands, and postoperative infection was considered inevitable. Patients frequently survived the operation only to die days later from sepsis.
Lister questioned this reality. Influenced by Louis Pasteur’s work on germ theory, he began to suspect that invisible organisms, not bad air, were responsible for infection. In the 1860s, Lister introduced carbolic acid to disinfect wounds, instruments, and even the air around the surgical field. The results were dramatic. Infection rates plummeted and patients began surviving surgeries that once carried a near-certain death sentence.
Lister’s insistence on cleanliness transformed surgery from a brutal last resort into a disciplined, safer practice. Every sterile field, surgical prep, and infection prevention protocol in today’s operating rooms traces its roots back to his radical idea that clean surgery saves lives.
