The Butchering Art

Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

By: Lindsey Fitzharris

Narrated by: Ralph Lister

The gripping story of how Joseph Lister's antiseptic method changed medicine forever

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-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.

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.

©2017 Lindsey Fitzharris (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Warning: She spares no detail!" (Erik Larson, best-selling author of Dead Wake)

"Fascinating and shocking." ( Kirkus Reviews)

A top-10 science book of fall 2017 ( Publishers Weekly)

Amazing!

I learned of Fitzharris through Joe Rogan’s podcast and immediately purchased this book. So interesting to know how far we have come and how dangerous it was to live just 100 years or more ago. I highly recommend.

I didn't want it to end

I'm a huge fan of the history of medicine, but there aren't a lot of heroes you can point to before the 20th century: Joseph Lister is one of the few. I like the uncompromising nature of the descriptions, and I'll be looking up the author's other work.

Awesome

An educational and inspirational tale. A must-read for every surgeon. Non-surgeons alike will likely be entertained and interested in the incredible historical perspective offered by this book.

This was my favorite book this year.

Narrator was fantastic, writing flowed wonderfully and seldom lost my interest. The story of Lister and his world was an interesting one.

Dr. Lister biography

Excellent story of how surgeons learned to "First do no harm". Cleanliness did not become a virtue until the second half of the 19th Century.