ANTISEPTIC SURGERY, devised in 1867 by Joseph Lister (1827-1912), pictured right, was introduced to London society in a nursing home run by Louisa McLaughlin and Emma Pearson.

As nurses treating the wounded at Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War, they had assisted William MacCormac, the Belfast surgeon who endorsed Lister's system. (See the previous page)

At that time most surgeons did not wash their hands, and Florence Nightingale scoffed at the notion of germs, but Emma and Louisa had insisted on "exquisite cleanliness" in their Ambulance Anglaise in Orléans. Consequently its death-rate was far the lowest of any field station in the area — less than 4 per cent.

During the 1876 Serbo-Turkish War "not one death occurred" among their patients. "Our hopeless cases are alive and walking about."

Upon returning to England, Emma and Louisa used their joint capital to set up one of London's only two private nursing homes. Their Medical and Surgical Home was located at 15 Fitzroy Square (left), the only London square designed by Robert Adam.

The huge house had previously been occupied by a widowed wool merchant from Saxony, Germany, and his two maidservants. It is now a listed as of outstanding architectural merit (Grade II*). Number 18, which lacks the fourth floor with its mansard roof but is otherwise almost identical, sold for about £5 million in July 2007.

In 1877 Lister moved from Edinburgh to become Professor of Clinical Surgery at King's College Hospital, London, where he was shocked by the antiquated standards of nursing. That same year the Medical and Surgical Home opened.

As the map below shows, it was a short walk from Lister's new residence at 12 Park Crescent. He immediately began placing his private patients at 15 Fitzroy Square, so that they soon occupied most of the 10 available beds.

The two lady superintendents, two other trained nurses, an assistant nurse, and five servants cared for the patients. Lister visited them every morning. If something like a splint needed adjustment he would often take off his jacket and do it himself.

To prevent any infection during operations, the Medical and Surgical Home nurses sterilized instruments and sponges in dilute carbolic acid. The operating table, of scrubbed deal, was covered in towels wrung out in the solution.

Next a nurse set a bowl of antiseptic lotion for the surgeon to scrub his hands, and pinned a clean huckaback towel over his waistcoat. [Gloves were not generally used until 1897, masks not until the 1918 flu epidemic]

While the patient inhaled chloroform, the nurse purified the skin round the site of operation with carbolic lotion, and covered it with towels wrung out in carbolic.

Instead of the usual silk which always caused infection, Lister used catgut to stitch up wounds, having made the revolutionary discovery that the body safely absorbs sutures made of catgut previously steeped in a carbolic-chromic acid solution.

Intending to kill germs in the air around the incision, Lister invented this antiseptic steam spray. Water was boiled in the upper part of its metal body by a spirit lamp below. A tube sent the steam to mix with carbolic acid in the attached container. This produced a mist. It choked everyone, but Lister did not stop using the spray until 1887 when it had become clear that air-borne pathogens were not a major source of wound infection in operating theatres.

An early bellows-operated version sprayed Queen Victoria in the face in 1871 while Lister was operating on a six-inch abscess under her left armpit. None the less in 1883, when he also became President of the Royal Society, she raised him to a baronetcy, and in 1897 created him a baron.

He let his private patients decide the size of his fee. The then Lord Lister wrote to 'Miss Leary/15 Fitzroy Square/W' on 15th August 1889: "I cannot but respect the sentiments expressed in your letter. But I beg to assure you that the satisfaction of seeing you at length restored to health & usefulness is sufficient reward for any trouble I may have taken." [Lister's letter and envelope were on sale for $4,999]

While in training as a nurse, Louisa had been the favorite pupil of Dorothy Pattison, who had taken the name Sister Dora when she joined an Anglican sisterhood and went to work at a hospital in Walsall. There Sister Dora did for the industrial workers what Florence Nightingale had done for the military casualties of the Crimea.

Shortly after the Medical and Surgical Home opened, she came to stay in order to learn the latest nursing techniques. "I have the privilege of seeing Mr. Lister do some wonderful operations," Sister Dora declared. Sadly, illness forced her to leave after a few weeks. In 1878 she died of cancer in Walsall, where her statue (left) was the first erected in Britain to a woman not of royal blood.

Three years after Louisa and Emma took over 15 Fitzroy Square, competition developed next door. At Number 16 a charity founded the Home Hospital (for Paying Patients). By 1891 it had expanded into Number 17, with nurses's quarters at Number 18. But shortly before that Louisa and Emma had sold the Medical and Surgical Home to a Miss Mary A. Moberly in order to move to Italy. Emma, listed in the 1884 publication Converts to Rome, died in Florence, birthplace of Florence Nightingale, in 1893 after a long battle with cancer.

© 2006 G. Harry McLaughlin.
Reproduction or transmission, in whole or in part, for other than personal use is prohibited without advance permission from Dr. G. H. McLaughlin.