Two stamps were issued on 1 September 1965 to mark the Centenary of the discovery of Antiseptic Surgery by Joseph Lister. The 4d value (SG 667) depicts Lister's Carbolic Spray and the 1/- (SG668) shows Lister himself with the chemical symbols in the background.

Joseph Lister, the son of a wine merchant and physicist Joseph Jackson Lister, was born on 5 April 1827 in Upton, Essex. He attended various Quaker schools before entering University College, London where he studied art before turning to medicine in 1848. Graduating in 1852, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1856 he was appointed assistant surgeon to James Syme or Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

In 1859 Lister was appointed Regius Professor of Surgery at Glasgow University and in 1861 was appointed surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. In this post he was responsible for the new surgical building which had been built with the hope of reducing deaths from what was then called "hospital disease", better known as operative sepsis. In the early 19th Century, if a patient did not die from the pain of an operation, as there were no anaesthetics then, it was likely that infection would set in and lead to death. At Glasgow, Lister found that between 1861 and 1865 between 45 and 50 percent of amputation patients died, mainly due to infection and this led Lister to experiment with antiseptics. At this time it was believed that infection was caused by "bad air", but Lister did not believe this and thought that infection was caused by a "dust".

In 1865, Louis Pasteur discovered living organisms in the air and Lister came to the conclusion that it was these microbes in the air that were causing the infections in patients. Lister began to use a solution of carbolic acid to clean wounds as well as using a carbolic spray to treat the atmosphere and wards, and in 1867 he reported that the wards at Glasgow Royal Infirmary had remained free of sepsis for 9months.

Lister's ideas were soon adopted throughout Europe, and particularly by the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian war, leading to further developments. By 1878 Robert Koch was using steam to sterilise equipment and dressings, a method Lister later adopted.

In 1875, Lister toured Germany where he was received with great enthusiasm and in 1876 he went to America, but was received with less enthusiasm than might be expected. There was also great opposition to Lister's ideas but in 1877, when he was offered the Chair of Clinical Surgery at Kings College, London, he had a chance to prove conclusively the merits of using antiseptics. In October of that year, he carried out an operation of wiring a fractured kneecap in antiseptic conditions and whilst there was much opposition to his methods, the publicity generated helped to change surgical opinion to accept that his methods added to the safety of surgery.

In 1883 Lister was made a baronet and in 1897 became Baron Lister of Lyme Regis. He was President of the Royal Society from 1895 to 1900. He was appointed as one of the original 12 members of the Order of Merit in 1902. Joseph Lister died in 1910 at Walmer in Kent.

The stamps were designed by Peter Gauld (4d) and Frank Ariss (1/-) and printed by Harrisons using the photogravure process on chalk surfaced paper with the "crowns" watermark. Two versions of the stamps were produces, one being "ordinary" and the other being "phosphor". The phosphor stamps have three phosphor bands. The stamps were withdrawn from sale on 15 April 1966. All of these stamps are available from Pennyred.