Fitzharris, Lindsey. The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine. New York: Scientific American, 2017

Outside the AAHM, Lister may best be remembered for the mouthwash Listerine (which he did not invent but was named after him), but within the history of medicine, he is a towering figure who helped introduce anti-septic surgery to the world.  Lindsey Fitzharris tells this tale in her fast-moving popular history.  Fitzharris is a PhD-trained scholar turned into a popular historian, with blogs and readily digestible histories (see below for one on plastic surgery).  With a penchant for the dramatic and disgusting, she keep the pages turning, and while she overstates Lister’s connection to the broader acceptance of the germ theory, she gets most of the story correct and is good, quick introduction to the man and his importance.

Other reading:

The literature on Lister and Listerism is voluminous.  The standard biography remains by his nephew (and thus a bit hagiographic):  Rickman John Godlee, Lord Lister (London:  MacMillan and Co, 1917).  For a more critical analysis of how Lister fits into the germ theory of disease, see Christopher Lawrence and Richard Dixey, “Practising on Principle:  Joseph Lister and the Germ Theories of Disease,” in Medical Theory, Surgical Practice:  Studies in the History of Surgery ed. Christopher Lawrence (New York:  Routledge, 1992) 153-214.  There are numerous articles describing its (slow) acceptance in various countries, viz., Upmalis, I. H.  “The Introduction of Lister’s Treatment in Germany.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 42 (1968):  221-240; Lindsay Granshaw, “Upon this Principle I have based a practice:  the development and reception of antisepsis in Britain, 1867-1890,” in John V. Pickstone, ed., Medical Innovations in Historical Perspective 1992; 17-46; Thomas Gariepy, “the introduction and acceptance of Listerian Antisepsis in the United States,” JHMAS 49 (1994):  167-206; Roland, Charles G.  “The Early Years of Antiseptic Surgery in Canada.”  Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (Oct 1967):  380-391.