At the royal college of Physicians
and surgeons of Glasgow
and surgeons of Glasgow
The College building was a hub for the medical community in Victorian Glasgow. Meetings, lectures and demonstrations were held in these rooms, allowing clinicians to showcase research, specimens and often patients. Advances in knowledge and practice were shared and discussed at meetings of the Glasgow Medico-Chirurgical Society and the Glasgow Pathological and Clinical Society, by emerging figures such as Joseph Lister, William Tennant Gairdner and William Macewen.
In 1868, Joseph Lister gave a lecture to the Glasgow Medico-Chirurgical Society that detailed his pioneering work into antisepsis. While working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Lister had realised that his patients were dying from infection after surgical procedures were performed. He then started to dress wounds in carbolic acid during the post-surgery recovery period. This proved to keep the wounds free from germs and the patients made full recoveries.