Apr 6, 2013 1 min read

Bruce Kauffmann’s look back at Joseph Lister, “the medical community’s Rodney Dangerfield,” on the March 31 commentary page, reflects the lack of scientific rigor in American medicine and the arrogance of many prominent doctors in the late 19th century. Lister received a standing ovation at the sixth International Medical Congress in Amsterdam in 1879 while American surgeons were still probing a potentially nonfatal bullet wound to President James Garfield with unwashed hands and instruments in 1881.

Revolutionary ideas tended to be treated with disbelief, resistance and contempt; Lister was not alone in his struggle to persuade the medical community to adopt his antisepsis technique. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. published his “The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever” in 1843 and was attacked by prominent doctors in his time.

Kauffmann lamented that Lister didn’t get his due respect, as he is now known for Listerine. That is not entirely true. A bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes, and a slime mold, Listerella paradoxa, are so named in his honor.

Jer-Yuan Tsai

Waynesburg