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

The gripping story of a visionary British surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world - the safest time to be alive in human history. In 'The Butchering Art', historian Lindsey Fitzharris recreates a critical turning point in the history of medicine, when Joseph Lister transformed surgery from a brutal, harrowing practice to the safe, vaunted profession we know today. Victorian operating theatres were known as 'gateways of death', Fitzharris reminds us, since half of those who underwent surgery didn't survive the experience. This was an era when a broken leg could lead to amputation, when surgeons often lacked university degrees, and were still known to ransack cemeteries to find cadavers.