Extraordinary Gentlemen: Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur & John Snow

by Kenneth Rougeau

For the better part of the last month I’ve been working on a large scale triptych (3′x10′ combined) commisioned by a group of pediatricians in Tennesee. I was originally approached via Etsy by one of the doctors who had seen my Clockwork Edison and wanted to know if I’d be interested in designing something similar for a large wall in their conference room. They had some fair but broad notions of the sort of thing they’d like, and a list of things they definitely didn’t want haha. Mostly they were after something steampunk, scifi, fantasy… Something big… After a bit of head scratching and a lot of fiddling around, I came up with the following conceptual sketch for them featuring Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, and Thomas Edison.

concept sketch featuring Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain and Thomas Edison

The doctors were quite pleased with the concept and asked if I might try something similar with steampunk-era physicians. I was given a list of potential candidates and ideas for elements & spent the next several days researching and collecting source materials. Once my research was completed, I’d settled upon three outstanding doctors from the late 1800s; Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, and John Snow. I chose these three not only for their acheivements (all those listed were outstanding for various reasons), but for their appearance (they had to look fitting for steampunk characters) & the quality of the source images I was able to find.

an early rough draft version

Dr. Joseph Lister (1827-1912), an English surgeon, pioneered antiseptic surgery. At a time when most people believed infections were caused by miasma, or “bad air”, and doctors didn’t necessarily wash their hands before surgery, Dr. Lister discovered antiseptics and promoted sterile surgery including the use of surgical gloves. A paper by French chemist Louis Pasteur concerning micro-organisms as the cause for rotting and fermentation caught the attention of Dr. Lister. Armed with this new insight, Dr. Lister set about experimenting to see if micro-organisms were also the cause of gangrene, and if so, how to go about eliminating them. Pasteur suggested three methods: filter, heat, or exposure to chemical solutions. Neither of the first two options were viable for human wounds, so Lister opted to experiment with the third, chemical solutions.

Extraordinary Gentlemen: Dr. Joseph Lister

by Kenneth Rougeau

Carbolic acid had been in use to deodorise sewage, so Dr. Lister tried spraying surgical instruments, incisions, and dressings with a solution of it. He found that a carbolic acid solution swabbed onto wounds significantly reduced the occurance of gangrene. Dr. Lister published a series of articles on the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery describing the procedure.

carbolic acid (phenol)

detail from Dr. Lister’s panel featuring carbolic acid gears

He also made surgeons wear clean gloves and wash their hands before and after operations with a carbolic acid solution. Instruments were washed in the same solution and assistants sprayed the solution in the operating theatre.

An early draft of Dr. Lister’s panel including surgical gloves

listeria bacteria, rusted

more effectualized listeria bacteria

staphylococcus aureus

As the germ theory of disease became more widely accepted, it was realised that infection could be better avoided by preventing bacteria from getting into wounds in the first place. This led to the rise of sterile surgery. Some consider Lister “the father of modern antisepsis”. In 1879 Listerine mouthwash was named after him for his work in antisepsis. Also named in his honour is the bacterial genus Listeria, typified by the food-borne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes.

Extraordinary Gentlemen: Louis Pasteur

by Kenneth Rougeau

Our second and central hero is the French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pastuer (1822-1895). While Pasteur is best known for inventing the pasteurization process, a method to stop milk and wine from causing sickness, he also made numerous including breakthroughs in chemistry, as well as in discovering the causes and preventions of disease. His work includes creating some of the first vaccines (for cholera, rabies, and anthrax). His experiments supported the germ theory of disease and proved that fermentation was caused by the growth of microorganisms.

detail from Pasteur’s panel

the rabies virus in rust and steel

anthrax in copper

salmonella in copper

copper cholera

Dr. John Snow (1813-1858), a British physician, was a leader in the adoption of medical hygiene & anaesthesia. He is considered to be one of the fathers of epidemiology, because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, England, in 1854. He was a sceptic of the then dominant miasma theory that stated that diseases such as cholera or the Black Death were caused by pollution or a noxious form of “bad air”. The germ theory was not widely accepted by this time, so he was unaware of the mechanism by which the disease was transmitted, but evidence led him to believe that it was not due to breathing foul air.

Extraordinary Gentlemen: Dr. John Snow

by Kenneth Rougeau

By talking to local residents, with the help of Reverend Henry Whitehead, he identified the source of the outbreak as the public water pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Although Snow’s chemical and microscope examination of a sample of the Broad Street pump water was not able to conclusively prove its danger, his studies of the pattern of the disease were convincing enough to persuade the local council to disable the well pump by removing its handle.

Snow later used a spot map to illustrate how cases of cholera were centred around the pump. He also made a solid use of statistics to illustrate the connection between the quality of the source of water and cholera cases. He showed that the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company was taking water from sewage-polluted sections of the Thames and delivering the water to homes with an increased incidence of cholera. Snow’s study was a major event in the history of public health, and can be regarded as the founding event of the science of epidemiology.

Dr. Snow’s map of London in copper with cholera covered buildings

It was discovered later that this public well had been dug only three feet from an old cesspit that had begun to leak fecal bacteria. A baby who had contracted cholera from another source had its diapers washed into this cesspit, the opening of which was under a nearby house that had been rebuilt farther away after a fire had destroyed the previous structure, and the street was widened by the city. It was common at the time to have a cesspit under most homes. Most families tried to have their raw sewage collected and dumped in the Thames to prevent their cesspit from filling faster than the sewage could decompose into the soil.

detail from Dr. Snow’s panel showing the Broad Street pump location

For more information, read The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World, a book by Steven Berlin Johnson in which he describes the most intense outbreak of cholera in Victorian London and what it means to us today, from the way we understand cities, science, disease, and the modern world.

framed mockup

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