Joseph Lister was the man who brought anti-sepsis to Edinburgh Infirmary

Although both Ignaz Semmelweis and Louis Pasteur had made the connection between filthy surgeons and death, Lister was the surgeon who worked out how to use the knowledge and tested it rigorously. All his patients’ treatments and results were meticulously written up in casebooks. These were lost for many years, until three were miraculously found in an Infirmary dustbin. One casebook belonged to James Syme, Lister’s mentor and father-in-law, one to Syme and Lister and one was Lister’s alone. A few years ago, I read about the discovery of these casebooks and that the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh had scanned them and made them available online. I held my breath and clicked through.

In Lister’s casebook, I found the surgeon’s notes on his treatment of Neil MacDougall, my great grandfather.

Neil was born in 1840 in Laggan. Aged nineteen he became a police constable in Doune and married Jane Shaw from Newtonmore. Jane was pregnant with their fifth child when Neil was admitted to the Royal Infirmary on 22 November 1870. He had been unwell for some time after a damaged ankle became infected. Mr Lister records that he successfully amputated Neil’s foot and goes on to describe, almost daily, the cleaning and monitoring of the wound and Neil’s temperature, state of mind and general well-being. But throughout December and January 1871 there were continual fevers, all carefully noted.

Neil died, on 1 February 1871, aged thirty-one, on Mr Lister’s ward in the Royal Infirmary, of what I believe we might now call sepsis. He was buried in Warriston Cemetery, in common unmarked ground, in a leafy area shaded by trees, down by the river. I visit him there.

There is a superb librarian/archivist at the Royal College of Surgeons and she let me hold and breathe in Mr Lister’s casebook. And how odd is this: I know, what I am sure none of his bereft family knew, that, among many other readings, at half past midnight on 4 December 1870, my great grandfather’s pulse was 122 and his temperature was 98.6.

And at noon on the day before he died, he was smiling.