3. Tackling Infection

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we look at how surgeons sought to deal with the issue of infection in the 19th century. Gangrene killed many after surgery but, with the advert of Germ Theory, antiseptic and aseptic surgery began to change this. Surgical theatres became increasingly sterile environments and as a result infection risk was greatly reduced.

Course

In this course, Dr Sally Frampton (University of Oxford) explores how surgery developed in the 19th-century. In the first three modules, we look at how surgeons in the 19th-century sought to tackle the three issues of pain, bleeding, and infection. In the fourth module, we focus in on the patient experience throughout the 19th century. In the final module, we look at surgeons themselves and how the process of becoming a surgeon changed over the course of the century.

Lecturer

Dr Sally Frampton is a research fellow at the University of Oxford. She has written widely on the history of surgery, including works on surgical risk and innovation. Her current research explores the global development of medical journalism as a specialist form of writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and how it has shaped the meaning of medicine.