Joseph Lister's Antiseptic Principle

After reading on Louis Pasteur's work on rotting and fermentation being caused by microorganisms, Joseph Lister postulated that gangrene was caused by the same action, and not 'miasmas' in the air as had been thought at the time. The plaque reads: "On this site stood the surgical wards in which from 1861 to 1869 Joseph Lister surgeon to the Royal Infirmary and Regius Professor of Surgery to the University of Glasgow initiated the method of antiseptic treatment. " On the 9th of October 1867, Lister presented a paper on his findings before the British Medical Journal. The number of lives saved from the adoption of his methods are impossible to even estimate.