A review of the sciences.
Introduced by Christopher Chataway.

Of the one-and-a-half million operations carried out in Britain every year it is estimated that from two to twenty per cent result in wound infection, which can lead to septicemia (blood poisoning) and in some cases death.
Surgeons today perform operations which would have seemed miraculous only a few years ago: but even now, a century after Joseph Lister published the first accounts of his revolutionary technique of antiseptic surgery, infection after operations is a menace, probably costing the Health Service £6 million every year. Tonight's programme investigates both the techniques used to prevent infection during an actual operation and research into the causes of infection which still trouble British hospitals.