The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

by Lindsey Fitzharris

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374537968
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	60,115
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lindsey Fitzharris has a PhD in the history of science and medicine from the University of Oxford. She is the creator of the popular website The Chirurgeon's Apprentice, and is the writer and presenter of the YouTube series Under the Knife. She writes for The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Lancet, and New Scientist.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Age Of Agony 3

1 Through The Lens 19

2 Houses Of Death 37

3 The Sutured Gut 57

4 The Altar Of Science 71

5 The Napoleon Of Surgery 89

6 The Frog's Legs 109

7 Cleanliness And Cold Water 129

8 They're All Dead 151

9 The Storm 173

10 The Glass Garden 187

11 The Queen's Abscess 207

Epilogue: The Dark Curtain, Raised 227

Notes 235

Acknowledgments 267

Index 273

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Staff Pick on NPR’s best books of 2017

Listed in the New York Times' 10 New Books We Recommend This Week

Listed on The Ultimate Buzzfeed Books Guide “for the person whose interests skew morbid”

One of Medscapes' “Books that doctors would love to give (or receive!)”

“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 Book 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

"Brilliant." —Kate Womersley, The Spectator

“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

"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 spectacular story about one of the most important moments in the history of medicine: the rise of sterile surgery. The Butchering Art is a spectacular book—deliciously gruesome and utterly gripping. You will race through it, wincing as you go, but never wanting to stop." —Ed Yong, bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes

"The Butchering Art is medical history at its most visceral and vivid. It will make you forever grateful to Joseph Lister, the man who saved us from the horrors of pre-antiseptic surgery, and to Lindsey Fitzharris, who brings to life the harrowing and deadly sights, smells, and sounds of a nineteenth-century hospital." —Caitlin Doughty, bestselling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity

"The Butchering Art is a brilliant and gripping account of the almost unimaginable horrors of surgery and postoperative infection before Joseph Lister transformed it all with his invention of antisepsis. It is the story of one of the truly great men of medicine and of the triumph of humane scientific method and dogged persistence over dogmatic ignorance." —Henry Marsh, bestselling author of Do No Harm

"Electric. The drama of Lister's mission to shape modern medicine is as exciting as any novel." —Dan Snow, BBC presenter and author

"Excellent . . . [Fitzharris] infuses her thoughtful and finely crafted examination of this [antiseptic] revolution with the same sense of wonder and compassion Lister himself brought to his patients, colleagues, and students . . . a remarkable life and time." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Fitzharris knows how to engage readers in fascinating and shocking details about medical history . . . In deftly capturing an 'epochal moment when medicine and science merged,' the author also offers an important reminder that, while many regard science as the key to progress, it can only help in so far as people are willing to open their minds to embrace change." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Fascinating and shocking." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A slightly gory, occasionally humorous, and very enjoyable biography of a man whose kindness, care, and curiosity changed medicine forever." —Susanne Caro, Library Journal

From the Publisher

…slim, atmospheric…the story it tells is one of abiding fascination, in part because it involves a paradigm shift so basic, so seemingly obvious, that one can scarcely believe the paradigm needed shifting in the first place. Yet it did. What Lister saw, which his colleagues did not, was that doctors in the Victorian era were making people sick. The Butchering Art traces his efforts to revolutionize medicine through one deceptively simple notion: Cleanliness.

The New York Times - Jennifer Senior

★ 07/03/2017
British science writer Fitzharris slices into medical history with this excellent biography of Joseph Lister, the 19th-century “hero of surgery.” Lister championed the destruction of microorganisms in surgical wounds, thus preventing deadly postoperative infections. This was a radical approach inspired by French microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur’s discovery of bacteria. Lister, whose Quaker father introduced him to the wonders of the microscope, became an evangelist for the germ theory of disease and the sterilization of both surgical instruments and doctors’ hands. The medical community resisted Lister’s procedures, but his successful treatment of Queen Victoria boosted his reputation and techniques—winning converts first in Scotland, then America, and finally London. “Lister’s methods transformed surgery from a butchering art to a modern science, one where newly tried and tested methodologies trumped hackneyed practices,” Fitzharris writes. She infuses her thoughtful and finely crafted examination of this revolution with the same sense of wonder and compassion Lister himself brought to his patients, colleagues, and students. “As he neared the end of his life, Lister expressed the desire that if his story was ever told, it would be done through his scientific achievements alone,” Fitzharris notes, respecting his wish and fulfilling it in the context of a remarkable life and time. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

06/15/2017
Our understanding of health and medicine has developed rapidly in the last 200 years. This book looks at a pivotal time in that development and one of the leading figures of modern medicine, Joseph Lister (1827–1912). Through observation, experimentation, and a passion to keep patients alive, Lister eventually overcame the prevailing beliefs of his day and saved countless lives. Readers will learn how breakthroughs such as pasteurization and the use of ether as an anesthesia led to a greater comprehension of bacteria and infection. Examples of cases, including personal accounts by patients, reveal frightening and painful surgery experiences. Descriptions of cringe-worthy hospital wards demonstrate how far we have come in our understanding of sanitation. Providing insight into Lister's character as well as detailing his life and death in England and Scotland are his personal relationships with colleagues, students, and his father. VERDICT A slightly gory, occasionally humorous, and very enjoyable biography of a man whose kindness, care, and curiosity changed medicine forever. An engaging read for history lovers.—Susanne Caro, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula

Library Journal

Narrator Ralph Lister is working from an excellent text, and this history of the discovery of antiseptic in the latter 1800s can be recommended to a general audience on a number of points. But the horrors of Victorian surgery haven’t dimmed in 200 years, and what Joseph Lister did to a dog in the name of science may stop many listeners cold. Ralph Lister is a capable and experienced narrator, but his style of rendering character voices doesn’t carry over well into history and biography. For example, must a letter of support from Joseph Lister’s students in Glasgow really be read with a brogue? This is a text that requires steadiness and restraint, a narrator who knows how to hold back rather than to accentuate. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

★ 2017-08-22
Medical historian and popular blogger Fitzharris narrates the quest of a tenacious 19th-century doctor to save his patients; in the process, he transformed the world of surgery and medicine.Joseph Lister's choice to become a surgeon was not the most obvious or reputable one for a Quaker growing up as the son of an esteemed scientist acclaimed for his improvements to the microscope. In the early 1800s, a surgeon was little more than a butcher, a "manual laborer who used his hands to make a living, much like a key cutter or plumber today." It didn't help that surgery was extremely risky for patients. The introduction of ether to British medicine in 1846 was a critical turning point because it afforded surgeons more time to perform procedures. However, patients were still dying of post-surgical infections in high numbers, and Louis Pasteur's ideas about germs were still academic and not widely disseminated. Lister took up Pasteur's work and applied it to surgery, experimenting and finally finding an antiseptic and technique that successfully lowered rates of postoperative infection. He made it his mission to share his findings with a medical establishment clinging to old beliefs. It is thanks to Lister's tenacity and belief in the efficacy of his techniques, despite widespread skepticism, that so many people today don't have to look at surgery as a possible death sentence. Fitzharris knows how to engage readers in fascinating and shocking details about medical history. She clearly, if sometimes quickly, explains medical and scientific terms and techniques while also using novelistic details and narrative techniques to move the story along. In deftly capturing an "epochal moment when medicine and science merged," the author also offers an important reminder that, while many regard science as the key to progress, it can only help in so far as people are willing to open their minds to embrace change.

Kirkus Reviews