In 1839 the chemist Justin von Liebig had asserted that sepsis was a kind of combustion caused by exposing moist body tissue to oxygen. It was therefore considered that the best prevention was to keep air away from wounds by means of plasters, collodion or resins.

Joseph Lister (1827-1912)

Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, doubted this explanation. For many years he had explored the inflammation of wounds, at the Glasgow infirmary. These observations had led him to considered that infection was not due to bad air alone, and that ‘wound sepsis’ was a form of decomposition.

Born on the 5 April 1827 in Upton, Essex, Joseph Lister was the son of the British physicist Joseph Jackson Lister.

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