198 years ago today, on April 5, 1827 (March 10, 1827), the British surgeon and medical scientist Joseph Lister was born. Joseph Lister was the inventor and promoter of surgical sterilization techniques and a pioneer of preventive medicine. Joseph Lister invented sterile surgery by keeping the operating room clean and using sterile instruments to prevent bacteria from invading wounds. According to the British Medical Journal, Lister's invention saved more lives than were lost in all the wars of the 19th century. Life Joseph Lister was born on April 5, 1827 in Yupton, England. His father was a member of the Royal Society and an amateur opticist. As early as primary school, he had a great ambition - to become a doctor. He entered University College London in 1844, received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1847, and a Master of Medicine degree in 1852. In 1853 he went to the University of Edinburgh as an assistant to Professor J. Syme of Surgery. In 1861 he became a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Glasgow, where he worked for eight years. It was during this period that he invented the technique of surgical embalming. At the Royal Infirmary of Glasgow, Liszt presided over the new outer ward. He was deeply alarmed by the high postoperative mortality rate here. Severe infections such as gangrene are a common postoperative complication. Liszt tried to keep the ward very clean, but this was not enough to avoid the high mortality rate. Many doctors insisted that the "miasma" (poisonous vapour) around the hospital was the cause of these infections, but this explanation did not satisfy Liszt. Then in 1865, Liszt read a paper by Louis Pasteur, a French biologist, and suddenly became aware of the germ theory of disease. This provided Liszt with the key idea. If the infection is caused by bacteria, the best way to prevent it after surgery is to eliminate it before it enters the exposed wound. Liszt used carbolic acid as a sterilizer and established a new sterilization method. Not only did he wash his hands carefully before each operation, but he also made sure that the utensils and dressings to be used were thoroughly hygienic. In fact, he even sprayed carbolic acid in the air of the operating room for a period of time, resulting in a dramatic decrease in postoperative mortality. From 1861 to 1865, the postoperative mortality rate in male emergency wards was 45%, which decreased to 15% by 1889. Liszt's first outstanding paper on sterilization was published in 1867. His ideas were not immediately accepted. In 1869 he was appointed professor of clinical surgery at the University of Edinburgh. During his seven-year tenure, he became famous all over the world. In 1875 he went sightseeing in France to preach his ideas, and the following year he made a similar trip to the United States; but he was not able to convince most audiences. In 1877 Liszt was appointed professor of clinical surgery at the Royal College of London, a term that lasted fifteen years. His demonstration experiment in sterilization surgery in London aroused great interest in the medical community, and the number of people who accepted his ideas continued to grow. By the time of Liszt's death, his sterilization principles were generally accepted in the medical community. Liszt received many honors for his pioneering contributions. He served as President of the Royal Society for five years and was Queen Victoria's personal surgeon. Liszt was married but had no children. On February 10, 1912 in Valmore, England, he was about to celebrate his eighty-fifth birthday, but unfortunately passed away. Evaluation of Liszt's discovery revolutionized the field of surgery and saved millions of lives. Not only are deaths from post-operative infections extremely rare today, but they have also saved many who would not have been willing to undergo surgery if the risk of infection had been as great as it was a century ago. And surgeons are now able to perform complex procedures that were previously thought to be so dangerous that infection was banned. For example, open-heart surgery was generally not considered a century ago. Although today's aseptic surgical techniques and Liszt's sterilization methods are different, the former and the latter involve essentially the same ideas, an extension of Liszt's principle. One might think that Liszt's ideas are obviously an inevitable product of Pasteur's ideas, and therefore no significant credit should be attributed to Liszt. However, despite Pasteur's treatise, someone was still needed to invent and popularize sterilization. Including both Liszt and Pasteur in this book is not the same as describing the same invention twice. The application of the germ theory of disease is of great significance, and if this achievement is distributed according to work, Pasteur, Leeuwenhoek, Alexander Fleming, and Liszt are all well qualified to have a place in this volume. One may also object to the ranking of Liszt so high in this volume. Almost 25 years before Liszt's achievements, the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis, who worked at the General Hospital in Vienna, clearly demonstrated the superiority of sterilization in obstetrics and surgery. Although Semmelweis became a professor and wrote an excellent treatise on his ideas, he was largely ignored. In fact, it was Joseph List's papers, lectures, and demonstration experiments that made the entire medical community aware of the importance of using sterilization in medicine.