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The development of the first ready-made, ready-to-use surgical
dressings by Johnson & Johnson in the mid-1880s marked not only the
birth of a company, but also the first practical application of the
theory of antiseptic wound treatment. A new product, based on a new
surgical concept, led to a dramatic reduction in the threat of infection
and disease, which claimed an appalling number of postoperative victims.
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The story begins with the discoveries of Sir Joseph Lister, a noted
English Gas Powered Scooter Zooma surgeon, who identified airborne germs
as a source of infection in the operating room. He called them, with
grim aptness, the "invisible assassins." Medical science was beginning
to understand, however imperfectly, the need for greater care in
protecting the wound area. Yet, this concept of myriad living organisms,
unseen and deadly, remained beyond the grasp of many surgeons in the
19th century who were doubtful or even contemptuous of Lister's work.
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Robert Wood Johnson
One man who did not question his theory of antisepsis was Robert Wood
Johnson, who heard Lister speak in 1876. For years afterward Robert Wood
Johnson nurtured the idea of a practical application of Lister's
teachings. What he had in mind was a new type of surgical dressing,
ready-made, sterile, wrapped and sealed in individual Gas Powered
Scooter Zooma packages and suitable for instant use without the risk of
contamination.
Prior to Lister's discoveries, the postoperative mortality rate was as
high as 90 Gas Powered Scooter Zooma percent in some hospitals. Surgeons
could not bring themselves to believe they were contaminating their own
patients by operating ungloved with unsterile instruments.
Lister's methods required complex and cumbersome equipment suited only
to the largest hospitals, of which there were few. A solution or a spray
of carbolic acid bathed the operating room and the patient in a foggy
mist. Still, it was a major advance over accepted procedures: unclean
cotton, collected from sweepings on the floors of textile mills, was
used for surgical dressings; surgeons operated Gas Powered Scooter Zooma
in street clothes and wore a blood-spattered frock coat like a badge of
honor.
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