Abstract
This paper analyses what is possibly the most important long-term impact of Joseph Lister's method of antisepsis on surgery, namely its role in replacing surgery's traditional regime of the management of chance by what can be called a regime of modern risk management. It was a crucial step for the expansion of surgery and thus the formation of modern surgery, as we know it today. It put surgery on a par with contemporary trends in industry, transport technologies and science, and made it a component factor in the formation of a modern technology-oriented society. The paper uses the example of the German-speaking countries, which, because of the rapid and emphatic acceptance of Lister's antisepsis there, is particularly well suited for such an analysis. It shows how, in this context, risk management, as a way of dealing with uncertainty, was an integral part of the new techniques of antisepsis and asepsis.