Medical Training
True or False: Students were encouraged to challenge their professors’ teachings.
False
Some students and even wealthy spectators would pay to watch operations. True or False: This meant surgery was partly a form of entertainment.
True
This disease, also known as “St. Anthony’s Fire,” made the skin red and shiny and spread quickly in wards.
erysipelas
Lister was raised in this religious community
Quaker
Students often learned from observing cadavers in public dissections, which sometimes led them to develop this attitude toward the human body
desensitization / clinical detachment
Surgeons often “proved” their skill by performing amputations in a specific way. How did speed factor into this, and why was it important?
faster surgery was considered more skillful because it reduced patient suffering (even if hygiene was ignored)
The smell in operating theaters was notoriously awful. Which two sources combined to make it unbearable?
rotting flesh from cadavers and gangrenous wounds of live patients
Surgeons sometimes went straight from dissecting cadavers to operating on living patients without doing this
washing their hands
Unlike many doctors of his day, Lister paid attention to this natural phenomenon, which sparked his later experiments.
microorganisms/nature’s processes
Resistance to scientific ideas in surgery was partly cultural. Surgeons feared that adopting new methods would undermine this.
their authority / professional prestige
The atmosphere of these performances helped create a culture that treated patients less as individuals and more as this
teaching tools / subjects of entertainment
In crowded theaters, hygiene was almost nonexistent. Surgeons would move from cadavers to live patients without washing. What tragic consequence often followed?
deadly post-operative infections (sepsis/erysipelas/pyemia)
Lister noticed that a chemical used in this industry could kill microbes. He later applied it in surgery.
carbolic acid used in tanning / the chemical industry
Lister’s religious belief that life had divine order aligned well with this scientific principle he later embraced.
“only life begets life” (biogenesis)
Surgeons often dismissed new scientific observations in favor of centuries-old teachings by this figure.
Galen
Many surgeons refused to wash their surgical coats, wearing them stiff with dried blood and pus. What nickname did these coats earn?
“honorable badges of experience”
Operating rooms were often designed like this type of structure to allow maximum visibility for students
Ampitheater
Before Lister, surgeons believed that this “element” in the air caused disease, rather than microorganisms
miasma or “bad air”
Lister became fascinated by this French scientist’s work on fermentation, which led to the idea that microorganisms could cause disease.
Louis Pasteur
Lister’s success marked the beginning of a shift from heroic, speed-focused surgery to this modern approach.
evidence-based, methodical, antiseptic surgery
Students often learned by dissecting bodies from this source, which was controversial and sometimes illegal.
grave robbers / stolen corpses
Some operating rooms became so infamous for infection that students and patients called them this.
“death chambers” or “chambers of contagion”
Lister’s hygiene breakthrough reduced infection rates from levels as high as this in some hospitals.
40–50% post-operative mortality
Lister applied carbolic acid in multiple ways in surgery. Name one.
cleaning instruments, dressing wounds, or spraying the operating theater
Surgeons often wore stained coats from previous surgeries. Why?
they believed stains showed experience and skill