By Moises Menendez, MD, FACS

Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister (1827-1912)

Sir Joseph Lister was a British surgeon and pioneer of antiseptic surgery. In the early to middle 19th century, surgery was a gruesome, traumatic experience, one that even the bravest of people avoided like the plague. The infection rate and mortality were extremely high for patients who underwent surgery. To start, there were no anesthetics—they simply hadn’t been invented yet—which meant that patients were fully conscious when undergoing their operations. With the discovery of general anesthesia in the mid-1800s, the number of surgical procedures increased, leading to a rise in the number of infected wounds.

Lister believed in the ideas of Louis Pasteur, based on the etiology of fermentation, and envisioned that this process was the same as the one causing infection and gangrene in limbs. Having observed the marked difference in morbidity and mortality between simple and compound fractures, he postulated that infection came from exposure to the air in compound fractures without the protection from the skin. He began his antiseptic method with compound fracture wounds because the standard treatment of amputation was always available should this method fail. Lister changed the treatment of compound fractures from amputation to limb preservation, and opened the way for abdominal and other intracavity surgery.

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Joseph Lister (1827-1912)
2013. Work was done in a toned paper, 19 x 25, using charcoal pencils without blending. Paper was treated with coffee and Betadine solution.
Artist: Moises Menendez, MD, FACS

Lister found a way to prevent infection in wounds during and after surgery. He was the first to apply the science of germ theory to surgery. By applying Pasteur’s advances in microbiology, he promoted the idea of sterile portable ports while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, in Scotland. Lister successfully introduced the use of carbolic acid (now known as phenol) to sterilize surgical instruments and to clean wounds, which led to a reduction in postoperative infections and made surgery safer for patients, thus distinguishing himself as the “father of modern surgery.”

Dr. Menendez is a general surgeon and self-taught portrait artist in Magnolia, Ark. Since 2012, he has completed a series of portraits of historical figures, in particular well-known physicians and surgeons.

This article is from the March 2021 print issue.