The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris

The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris

Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing
Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize
A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly
A 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.

The Chirurgeon's Apprentice and Grave Matters, as well as the YouTube series Under the Knife, are all created by Lindsey Fitzharris. She contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Lancet, and others. She holds a doctorate in the history of science, medicine, and technology from the University of Oxford, as well as a Wellcome Trust postdoctoral research scholarship. Her first book is The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Mission to Change the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780374117290
ISBN 10	0374117292
Title	The Butchering Art
Author	Lindsey Fitzharris
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Scientific American
Year published	2017-10-17
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.