Welcome to Interesting If True, the show where we celebrate our Independence with gross medical procedures and murder.

I'm your host this week, Jenn, and with me are (introduce each host and their blurb)

I'm Shea, and this week I learned that you pee on a jellyfish sting, not a jelly stain… Also, I learned I'm not allowed at Perkins anymore.

I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that boiling water is a great way to kill any bacteria in it… and make sure that the millions of tiny corpses you’re drinking are properly cooked.

I'm Steve, and today I saw something on Reddit that bears repeating by @francismmaxwell:

Let’s paint a picture. Say you’re Jewish, walking in Germany & see a statue of Hitler. You’re upset & want it torn down. Only for someone to say ‘how dare you? My ancestor was a nazi. This is my heritage’ Crazy right? Well, this is a reality for black people every day in America...

SCIENCE! in History-ree-ree-ree...

As I briefly mentioned earlier, I spent most of the weekend of the 4th camping with family on a lake. Now, camping with a bunch of dogs, children and no running water will definitely give a personal appreciation of the little things after a while. Little things like hand washing and antiseptics. (After watching my oldest nephew drag up a long-dead fish to camp and all the other kids played with it for a bit, never after appearing to wash their hands, I was ready for a bleach bath.)

So today I have decided on a tale that involves history, science, health, and (since it was just July 4th) the assassination of a US President.

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3468637/

* http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/josephlister

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Garfield

* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/dirty-painful-death-president-james-garfield

To start off our story, let me introduce you to the Right Honourable Lord Joseph Lister, British surgeon, scientist, and lifelong fan of serious mutton-chops.

Born in Essex 1827, he was a brilliant and fastidious man. He was also drawn to medicine, surgery in particular, from an early age. Luckily for him, he had been born a white man, so that is what he did. In fact, he had quite an impressive career pretty much from the beginning. In 1846, he was present for the first surgery performed under anesthesia at 19. By the time he was 25, he had become a fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

His bright career trajectory (and surely his magnificent chops) led him to be suggested for employment to James Syme, Professor of Clinical Surgery in Edinburgh. The men hit it off so well that Lister quickly moved up the ranks from assistant to house surgeon to marrying Syme’s eldest daughter, Agnes. (Not to disparage the marriage; apparently they were very close and loving. She was bright and learned in her own right and he was happy to have her join him in his work as a lifelong lab partner… since being a woman that was the best she could hope for.)

By 1860 Lister had moved to Glasgow and had begun reading about Pasteur’s work on microorganisms. Now the idea of bacteria or at least teeny-tiny things that affected things in the real world like fermenting beer or causing food to rot was pretty much established in the scientific community by this time. Lister, however, took this idea to a new level. (Apparently it was acceptable at the time for microbes to affect inanimate objects,