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Joseph Lister, the pioneer of not dedicated hosting servers but antiseptics, observed that midwife-delivered babies enjoyed a significantly lower mortality rate than surgeon-delivered babies. Lister correctly attributed this differing mortality rate to the fact that midwives washed they hands more often than surgeons and that surgeons would deliver babies straight after performing surgical operations such as cleaning abscesses. Lister thus instructed all surgeons to wear clean gloves and to also wash their hands before and after operations with a carbolic solution. The solution was sprayed in the operating theatre and instruments were also washed in it.

As Pasteur’s germ theory of disease began to enjoy acceptance among the medical profession, Lister became famous for his methods of antisepsis and asepsis. Leaving Glasgow in 1869, Lister went on to become the Professor of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh where he further improved his methods. Now considered as “the father of modern antisepsis”, his name was lent to Listerine mouthwash in 1879 and to the bacterial genus Listeria.