Sir Alexander Fleming

Pasteur discovered germs, and lister killed them.These two men together revolutionized  the theory and practice of medicine.
Louis Paster,a French chemist, discovered that disease was caused by living organisms so small that they could not be seen with the naked eye-micro-organisms,or microbes,or bacteria,or germs; the words of all mean the same thing . Joseph Lister,an English surgeon-later Lord Lister, the first medical peer-applied Pasteur's discovery to surgery.

                   Since germs are alive, germs can be killed .They can be destroyed by heart or poisoned by certain chemicals, called antiseptics; carbolic acid is one, that was the germ-killer Lister used. Previously surgeons had, without knowing it, infected there patients on the operating-table with germs, chiefly from their surgical instruments. Lister sterilized is instruments with carbolic acid. and used carbolic acid to kill the germs on is hands.On the patient's skin, and even in the air in the operating-theatre. Then he could cut is patients open with out fear of infecting them with the germs of this ease.


         Lister's aim was the prevention of disease.The object of his antiseptic method, as it was called, was to stop germs from getting in to the body.The cure of disease was a more difficult problem, for here the germs were already inside the body.Certainly they could be killed by the same antiseptic method; but it was soon found that a chemical that destroyed germs also destroyed the cells of the body. Injecting  carbolic acid in to the blood was tried, and quickly abandoned for it did more harm then good. To kill all the germs the dose would have had to be strong enough to kill the patient, to .