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The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
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About The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest To
Product Description Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science WritingShort-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book PrizeA Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers WeeklyA Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian "Warning: She spares no detail!" ―Erik Larson, bestselling author of Dead Wake In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. She conjures up early operating theaters―no place for the squeamish―and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than patients’ afflictions, and they were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. At a time when surgery couldn’t have been more hazardous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister, who would solve the riddle and change the course of history.Fitzharris dramatically reconstructs Lister’s career path to his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection and could be countered by a sterilizing agent applied to wounds. She introduces us to Lister’s contemporaries―some of them brilliant, some outright criminal―and leads us through the grimy schools and squalid hospitals where they learned their art, the dead houses where they studied, and the cemeteries they ransacked for cadavers.Eerie and illuminating, The Butchering Art celebrates the triumph of a visionary surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world. Review “Fast-paced, thoroughly researched . . . Fitzharris documents her hero’s long struggle against naysayers and rivals, as well as the setbacks he faced in his personal and professional life, in an engaging journey into the past. This is popular history at its best.” ―Dean Jobb, The Scotsman “The Butchering Art is an absorbing medical and social history that will leave you feeling both enlightened and thankful to benefit from the advances Lister (and his wife) popularized.” ―Sarah Harrison Smith, Omnivoracious “A fascinating account of how hospitals became places of healing rather than death.” ―The Daily Mail “Atmospheric . . . The story it tells is one of abiding fascination” ―Jennifer Senior, The New York Times "Vivid, gory" ―Agatha French, Los Angeles Times “[A] vivid picture. . . Some of it reads as the brutal relic of a vanished past; some of it reads as a brutal relic of the present.”―Genevieve Valentine, NPR "Readers interested in the medical field can’t go wrong with this one." ―Bookish A Publishers Weekly Picks Books of the Week ". . . pulsating, technicoloured . . . [Fitzharris] has an eye for morbid detail, visceral imagery and comic potential." ―Wendy Moore, The Guardian Book of the Day, The Guardian "The Butchering Art is a formidable achievement ―a rousing tale told with brio, featuring a real-life hero worthy of the ages and jolts of Victorian horror to rival the most lurid moments of Wilkie Collins" ―John J. Ross, The Wall Street Journal “[Fitzharris] paints a compelling portrait of a man of conviction, humor and, above all, humanity. . . The Butchering Art is thoroughly enjoyable."-- The Guardian "In The Butchering Art, Lindsey Fitzharris becomes our Dante, leading us through the macabre hell of nineteenth-century surgery to tell the story of Joseph Lister, the man who solved one of medicine's most daunting and lethal puzzles. With gusto, Dr. Fitzharris takes us into the operating theaters of yore as Lister awakens to the true nature of the killer that turned so many surgeries into little more than slow-moving executions. Warning: She spares no detail!" ―Erik Larson, bestselling author of Dead Wake and The Devil in the White City"With an eye for historical detail and an ear for vivid prose, Lindsey Fitzharris tells a spe
