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Operating rooms smell like sewers! This observation led Joseph Lister to discover antiseptics in 1867. He used weaker versions of carbonic acid, used to treat sewers, on wounds. Until this discovery, surgeons wore coats covered with the pus, blood and germs from previous operations without realizing that 50 percent of the deaths after operation were caused due to infection. Lister's discovery reduced number of deaths during Lister's own operations from 50 to 5 percent in two years. View another historical medical fact... |
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