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A Surgeon With 300% Mortality Rate From a Single Operation and Other Historic Screwups

Khalid Elhassan October 11, 2020 32 min

Robert Liston - Surgery — Dr. Robert Liston operating. Wellcome Images

25. A Lucky Career Track Switch

Royal Army medical personnel in WWI. Great War Forum

Alexander Fleming initially wanted to become a surgeon. However, while serving in a reserve regiment, he was recognized as a great marksman. To become a surgeon, he would have had to leave his medical school and move away – which would have meant leaving his unit. His commanding officer did not want to lose the promising reservist. So he introduced Fleming to a prominent researcher and immunologist, who convinced him to become a researcher instead.

During WWI, Fleming served in the Army Medical Corp, where he observed the deaths of many soldiers from uncontrollable infections. Antiseptics were used to fight infections, but they often did more harm than good. Fleming conducted research, which showed that using antiseptics was a mistake when it came to serious injuries: they did nothing to stop the proliferation of anaerobic bacteria in deep wounds. His research was initially rejected, but Fleming plugged on.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.