The butchering art : Joseph Lister's quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine / Lindsey Fitzharris.
2017
RD27.35.L57 F58 2017 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
The butchering art : Joseph Lister's quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine / Lindsey Fitzharris.
Edition
First edition.
ISBN
9780374117290 (hardcover)
0374117292 (hardcover)
9780374715489 (electronic book)
0374117292 (hardcover)
9780374715489 (electronic book)
Published
New York : Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
Language
English
Description
286 pages ; 24 cm
Call Number
RD27.35.L57 F58 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification
617.092 B
Summary
A dramatic account of how 19th-century Quaker surgeon Joseph Lister developed an antiseptic method that indelibly changed medicine, describes the practices and risks of early operating theaters as well as the belief systems of Lister's contemporaries.
"In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters--no place for the squeamish--and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These medical pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than their 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 deadly riddle and change the course of history. Fitzharris dramatically recounts Lister's discoveries in gripping detail, culminating in his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection--and could be countered by antiseptics. Focusing on the tumultuous period from 1850 to 1875, she introduces us to Lister and his contemporaries--some of them brilliant, some outright criminal--and takes us through the grimy medical schools and dreary hospitals where they learned their art, the deadhouses where they studied anatomy, and the graveyards they occasionally ransacked for cadavers." -- Publisher's description
"In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters--no place for the squeamish--and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These medical pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than their 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 deadly riddle and change the course of history. Fitzharris dramatically recounts Lister's discoveries in gripping detail, culminating in his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection--and could be countered by antiseptics. Focusing on the tumultuous period from 1850 to 1875, she introduces us to Lister and his contemporaries--some of them brilliant, some outright criminal--and takes us through the grimy medical schools and dreary hospitals where they learned their art, the deadhouses where they studied anatomy, and the graveyards they occasionally ransacked for cadavers." -- Publisher's description
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-266) and index.
Record Appears in
Table of Contents
Prologue : the age of agony
Through the lens
Houses of death
The sutured gut
The altar of science
The Napoleon of surgery
The frog's legs
Cleanliness and cold water
They're all dead
The storm
The glass garden
The queen's abscess
Epilogue : the dark curtain, raised.
Through the lens
Houses of death
The sutured gut
The altar of science
The Napoleon of surgery
The frog's legs
Cleanliness and cold water
They're all dead
The storm
The glass garden
The queen's abscess
Epilogue : the dark curtain, raised.