Saturday, July 27, 2024

July 27– “On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery” by Joseph Lister (1867)

 Same guy Listerine is named after

July 27– “On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery” by Joseph Lister (1867)

Summary: If you put antiseptic on wounds, they don't get infected.

Commentary: I've been getting a lot of mileage out of Fordham's online stuff lately. Good for things that are small, have weird formatting, etc. that can be hard to find or awkward on Gutenberg. I know I said something about same paragraph footnotes recently, and this one has them. Maybe that's all the Fordham stuff, or just a coincidence. 

The usual "wow, this is neat"/"wow, more people should know this stuff" on medical/scientific primary source documents applied here. My main comment on this specific piece that all of these treatments (which consist largely of soaking a rag in antiseptic, swabbing out wounds, and covering it until it scabs) sound incredibly painful.


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