Event Review: How Carlisle Sewage Works saved your life.

Quentin Cooper and Hugh Pennington stand in front of Lister's Carbolic Spray

I’m pretty lucky to work at the Wellcome Trust. We always have excellent events about science or the history of medicine. This month was no different. I went to the first in a series of talks held at Wellcome Collection called ‘The Thing Is…’, hosted by Quentin Cooper from Radio 4′s Material World. The event invites a guest speaker to describe the history behind a single object found within Wellcome Collection’s vast archives.

Our speaker this month was Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen. The object he chose to describe was a device for spraying carbolic acid, dating back to around 1875, designed by Joseph Lister. Professor Pennington used the machine to describe the history of antisepsis, early microbiology and surgery.