T.E. W. (terez93) reviewed The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine on + 323 more book reviews
Like the history of science, the umbrella under which this genre likewise falls, the history of medicine is a sub-specialty all its own. Many works are rather technical and difficult to access for non-specialists, but this one a fascinating read, comprised of engaging prose and imaginative description. I always appreciate learning how we got from "there" to "here," and this is a particularly striking topic. It's a thorough history of nineteenth-century medicine, as much as the story of one Joseph Lister, not to be confused with another renowned surgeon, Robert Liston, who has a knife named after him (which was mostly famously used by Jack the Ripper, apparently).
I'm something of an admitted Anglophile, and anything Victorian is certain to catch my attention, so this unique study easily caught my eye. A word to the wise, however: the material pulls no punches, and tells it like it is (was), so be prepared to encounter some absolutely gruesome scenes throughout. It's a wonder that anyone emerged alive from their date with the knife in bygone centuries: indeed, many simply didn't. Still more died shortly thereafter from infection, so surviving the surgery certainly didn't mean that someone was going to recover. And, then, there is the, well, just inexplicable: Fitzharris recounts, for example, the story of one of Liston's famous "speed-amputations," whereby he amputated the limb, but also inadvertently cut into one of the attendants, and in his haste to, even slashed the coat of a nearby observer. Reportedly, the patient eventually died of infection, but so did the attendant, after being cut with the knife; the unfortunate observer had apparently died on the spot of a heart attack resulting from the shock of his encounter with Liston's gleaming blade. So, this procedure is apparently the only one in documented history which had a 300% mortality rate!
I think one of the most apt descriptions of the book in general comes from reviewer Erik Larson, who said that the author "becomes our Dante, leading us through the macabre hell of nineteenth-century surgery to tell the story of... the man who solved one of medicine's most daunting and lethal puzzles." Macabre hell is right: eighteenth- and at least early-nineteenth-century medicine, and particularly surgery, was in some ways not even as advanced as that of the ancient world, at least in practice. Some of the flawed Classical paradigms, such as the "humours" theory, were still being promulgated in the nascent medical schools of the day, which were little more than a shop of horrors, where doctors were ill-trained (and, in some cases, since most learning simply occurred via a form of osmosis and observation rather than direct instruction) and rarely taught much of anything.
The story of the main character's life and quest to find a cause and cure for infection is a meandering journey through the medical history of the nineteenth century, the period of luminaries such as Liston, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone and Louis Pasteur, who developed many of the procedures we take for granted, and not before time: as the author notes, "hospitals were known by the public as 'Houses of Death,'" with few surviving them. The survival rate was much better just about everywhere, including at home, but only the very wealthy could afford house calls. One gangrenous limb could take out an entire floor of patients, such was the lack of sanitation. All that changed, on account of the efforts of a handful of people, which changed the practice of medicine forever.
The book is well-researched, and is comprehensive in its treatment of the subject, but, as above, it's still very accessible to the non-specialist, and would be appropriate for history buffs and those interested in the daily life of this period as well. As much as this period is romanticized, I'm certainly glad that the practice of medicine has changed, at least for most of us!
I'm something of an admitted Anglophile, and anything Victorian is certain to catch my attention, so this unique study easily caught my eye. A word to the wise, however: the material pulls no punches, and tells it like it is (was), so be prepared to encounter some absolutely gruesome scenes throughout. It's a wonder that anyone emerged alive from their date with the knife in bygone centuries: indeed, many simply didn't. Still more died shortly thereafter from infection, so surviving the surgery certainly didn't mean that someone was going to recover. And, then, there is the, well, just inexplicable: Fitzharris recounts, for example, the story of one of Liston's famous "speed-amputations," whereby he amputated the limb, but also inadvertently cut into one of the attendants, and in his haste to, even slashed the coat of a nearby observer. Reportedly, the patient eventually died of infection, but so did the attendant, after being cut with the knife; the unfortunate observer had apparently died on the spot of a heart attack resulting from the shock of his encounter with Liston's gleaming blade. So, this procedure is apparently the only one in documented history which had a 300% mortality rate!
I think one of the most apt descriptions of the book in general comes from reviewer Erik Larson, who said that the author "becomes our Dante, leading us through the macabre hell of nineteenth-century surgery to tell the story of... the man who solved one of medicine's most daunting and lethal puzzles." Macabre hell is right: eighteenth- and at least early-nineteenth-century medicine, and particularly surgery, was in some ways not even as advanced as that of the ancient world, at least in practice. Some of the flawed Classical paradigms, such as the "humours" theory, were still being promulgated in the nascent medical schools of the day, which were little more than a shop of horrors, where doctors were ill-trained (and, in some cases, since most learning simply occurred via a form of osmosis and observation rather than direct instruction) and rarely taught much of anything.
The story of the main character's life and quest to find a cause and cure for infection is a meandering journey through the medical history of the nineteenth century, the period of luminaries such as Liston, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone and Louis Pasteur, who developed many of the procedures we take for granted, and not before time: as the author notes, "hospitals were known by the public as 'Houses of Death,'" with few surviving them. The survival rate was much better just about everywhere, including at home, but only the very wealthy could afford house calls. One gangrenous limb could take out an entire floor of patients, such was the lack of sanitation. All that changed, on account of the efforts of a handful of people, which changed the practice of medicine forever.
The book is well-researched, and is comprehensive in its treatment of the subject, but, as above, it's still very accessible to the non-specialist, and would be appropriate for history buffs and those interested in the daily life of this period as well. As much as this period is romanticized, I'm certainly glad that the practice of medicine has changed, at least for most of us!
Susan H. (Higfin) reviewed The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine on + 227 more book reviews
Excellent history and fluent reading. I read it in two sittings and learned so much!
