The first 'antiseptic' operation.

On August 12th 1865, 150 years ago, the Professor of Surgery at the University of Glasgow, Joseph Lister, performed a relatively minor operation in a side ward at the Royal Infirmary, the dressing and splintage of a compound fracture of the left leg. Yet this operation must be regarded as the watershed between two eras of surgery--the primitive and the modern--since it was the first to be performed as an antiseptic procedure.