The History of Surgical Wound Infection: Revolution or Evolution?

Abstract

Effective control of wound disease developed around two key moments: the adoption of antiseptic practices from the 1860s and the advent of antibiotics from the late 1930s. This chapter begins by exploring the issue of wound disease before the 1860s and why it became a high-profile problem for surgeons in that decade. It then considers Joseph Lister’s system of antiseptic surgery and its roots in Louis Pasteur’s germ theories. The controversies over Lister’s ideas and methods were protracted and resolved only when Listerism became a broad church, embracing German bacteriology and aseptic, germ-free practices. The main challenges with wound infection in the twentieth century were contaminated wounds in World War I, the place of antibiotics in infection control, and, latterly, septic bacteria resistant to antibiotics.