From a ridiculed “treatment“ to an epoch-making method carbolic
"Lister's Carbolated Spray" - The carbolic acid spray was directed so that the surgeon’s hands, the instruments, the operating area and even the assistant’s hands were continuously located in the radius of action of the spraying unit.
Until Sir Joseph Lister’s epoch-making invention in the 1870’s, hardly any effective methods of controlling the various wound diseases were available to physicians so that a fast amputation of the affected members often was the only choice of methods. Particularly pyemia (blood poisoning), sepsis (toxemia), hospital gangrene, tetanus as well as traumatic erysipelas occurred only sporadically after the introduction of antisepsis or disappeared completely.
Recourse to Pasteur: air responsible for dangerous microbes
The discovery of the antiseptic wound dressing was however not made over night. Sir Joseph Lister had always devoted himself to controlling the alarmingly increasing mortality caused by wound infection in hospitals and relied on improved hygiene measures.
In 1865, Thomas Anderson, a chemistry professor, informed Lister about the research results of Louis Pasteur, who had been investigating the genesis of infectious diseases for two years. He determined microorganisms in the air as the cause of fermentation and putrefaction. Now Lister sought a chemical method of destroying the microbes which threatened wound healing. With carbolic acid Lister found an antiseptic in which he soaked the bandages to disinfect wounds.
Paul Hartmann Sr. does business with Sir Joseph Lister
"Dear Sir, I send you, according your request, samples of the different materials..." - beginning of the letter of Lister to Paul Hartmann
To promote the widespread use of the new wound dressing, especially cost-effective production of the carbolated gauze was important to Lister. Therefore he willingly answered an enquiry from Paul Hartmann Sr. from Heidenheim, Germany, and provided detailed instructions in his letter of April 27, 1874.
Thus it was possible to start the production of the novel bandage material already in the fall of the same year. In this manner Paul Hartmann Sr. made a clever and trend-setting decision which promoted the further successful rise of his company. Incidentally, Sir Joseph Lister is just one example of the excellent collaboration with eminent scientists from the field of medicine which has meanwhile become a tradition at HARTMANN.
Belated recognition: “The greatest turn in the history of surgery"
While Lister himself did not gain wide recognition in his home country until he was offered the chair of clinical surgery at Kings College in London in 1877, his dressing method had already been accepted in Europe around 1880 so that in 1881 the eminent surgeon Richard von Volkmann, from Halle in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, referred to Lister’s achievement as the “greatest turn in the history of surgery“ to the applause of all participants at the “International Medical Congress” in London.
