Kill or Cure: An Illustrated History of Medicine by Steve Parker

Author:Steve Parker [Parker, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DK Publishing
Published: 2013-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

The British Medical Journal finally acknowledged Lister’s achievements in 1879: “… The man who has done the most to take the ‘disgrace’ out of surgery is Mr. Lister.” By this time, he was already Chair of Clinical Surgery at King’s College, London, and Personal Surgeon in Ordinary to Queen Victoria. Royal approval was sealed when he had the privilege of lancing a large abscess in the queen’s left armpit. She recorded: “… I bear pain so badly. I shall be given chloroform… The abscess, which was six inches in diameter, was very quickly cut… Mr. Lister, whose great invention, a carbolic spray to destroy all organic germs, was used…” In 1883, Lister was made a baronet; in 1891, he cofounded and became chairman of the British Institute of Preventive Medicine (now called the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine); and in 1897, he was the first surgeon to be made a baron for his medical achievements.

Lister may not have had exceptional surgical skills, nor did he have much of a sense of humor: medical students met with a muted response when they joked about his carbolic spray machine, saying before an operation, “Let us-s-pray.” But however private and emotionally detached he may have been as a man, Lister’s quest to rid the operating room of its septic legacy saved the lives of many patients, and secured his place in history.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.