![]() ![]() By making the audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection – and could be treated with antiseptics – he changed the history of medicine forever. In squalid, overcrowded hospitals, doctors remained baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high.Īt a time when surgery couldn’t have been more dangerous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: Joseph Lister, a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon. ![]() While the discovery of anesthesia somewhat lessened the misery for patients, ironically it led to more deaths, as surgeons took greater risks. In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. This was an era when a broken leg could lead to amputation when surgeons often lacked university degrees and were still known to ransack cemeteries to find cadavers. The book is both gripping and gory at times, but covers personal life and loss, as well as a fascinating historical review of a new age in surgery. Victorian operating theaters were known as “gateways of death,” Lindsey Fitzharris reminds us since half of those who underwent surgery didn’t survive the experience. ![]() ![]() The story of a visionary British surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world – the safest time to be alive in human history. Lister is also the protagonist in Lindsey Fitzharris The Butchering Art: Joseph Listers Quest to Transform the Grisly. ![]()
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