Famous ENT surgeons of the past

History teaches us that the development of medicine and surgery, like most human activities, has not been a steady uniform process, but has occurred mainly in a series of dramatic forward spurts separated by long periods of relative inertia. We are certainly living through such an active phase today with evidence of rapid technological change all around us, and there is a tendency to believe that the rate of progress has never been greater; but this is, however, a misconception, as the golden age of medical history was a period of not much more than a decade in the middle of the nineteenth century when the whole face of medicine and surgery was completely transformed by at least seven enormous developments, each of which was dominated by a man (in one case a woman) of genius. It was then that Claud Bernard (Fig. 1) completely transformed and advanced the whole science of physiology, while another Frenchman, Louis Pasteur (Fig. 2) established the principles of practical bacteriology, and a German, Virchow (Fig. 3) founded the speciality of histopathology. By applying the discoveries of Pasteur, Lister (Fig. 4) in Edinburgh, and later in London, developed the whole concept of antiseptic surgery which rapidly led to the aseptic surgery of today. This, together with the simultaneous introduction of anaesthesia, has completely transformed the practise of surgery.