Father of antiseptic surgery, but he didn’t invent mouthwash

Was Listerine invented by a Scot, Joseph Lister, or am I talking hogwash? (Perhaps that should be “mouthwash”) – J.

I’m afraid you are, as Joseph Lister wasn’t Scottish, and anyway, he didn’t invent Listerine.

Lister, a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, was born in West Ham, London, in 1827.

You may be mistakenly thinking he was Scottish as he was house surgeon at the University of Edinburgh and became professor of surgery at the University of Glasgow in 1860.

At Glasgow, he read Louis Pasteur’s work on micro-organisms and decided to experiment with wounds using one of Pasteur’s proposed techniques, that of exposing the wound to chemicals.

He chose dressings soaked with carbolic acid (phenol) to cover the wound and the rate of infection was vastly reduced.

Lister then experimented with hand-washing, sterilising instruments and spraying carbolic in the theatre while operating, in order to limit infection.

He succeeded in lowering infection rates and Listerian principles were widely adopted by surgeons, saving countless millions of lives.

Lister is now known as “the father of antiseptic surgery”.

In 1879, Joseph Lawrence, a chemist in St. Louis, Missouri, developed an antiseptic which included eucalyptol, menthol, methyl salicylate, and thymol.

He named his antiseptic Listerine in honour of Joseph Lister.