Joseph Lister

1827 (Upton, England) – 1912 (Walmer)

Pasteur and Lister became great friends (Lister’s familiarity with the spoiling of wine — his father J. J. Lister was a wine-merchant by day — helped him see how Pasteur’s biochemical theories could be applied to sepsis in wounds). He did his best at a London congress to promote a civilised meeting between Pasteur and Koch (the three of them leading the way in the bacteriological understanding of infection and immunity). He was also strongly supportive of Mechnikov, whose ideas had been under fire, and became a friend. Cohn introduced Koch to him, while Babbage and Roux were among his correspondents.

Joseph Lister knew…