A great history book that I purchased for my classroom and the library at the school I teach at.. It is a well-writen book and excellently researched.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33931044-the-butchering-art?from_search=true
Okay, so maybe starting out the year finishing a book begun in 2017 is setting a tone for 2018. What can I say? The book was very informative detailing early developments in the surgical field. Beginning any new discipline requires a few mistakes along the way and this book dipped right in to describe some of those ventures. Spoiler alert: Performing surgery sans anesthetic is not for the faint of heart. My admiration is extended to those patients who endured the most painful operations with barely a flinch. Of course what choice did they have - the frying pan or the fire? This well-written biography of Mr. Lister and his medical career reminds us of the pioneering efforts of scientists in the 19th century. As for Mr. Lister whose dedication for perfection brought him fame and fortune and for the rest of us pain and germ free surgical procedures, I think we got the better deal.

I reviewed it here: https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/magazine/from-barbers-and-butchers-to-modern-surgeons

(3.5 stars) Surgery was a gory business with a notably high fatality rate well into the nineteenth century. Surgeons had the fastest hands in the West, but their victims were still guaranteed at least a few minutes of utter agony as they had a limb amputated or a tumor removed, and the danger wasn’t over after they were sewn up either: most patients soon died from hospital infections. The development of anesthetics and antiseptic techniques helped to change all that.

Fitzharris opens with the vivid and rather gruesome scene of a mid-thigh amputation performed by Robert Liston at University College Hospital in London in 1846. This surgery was different, though: it only took 28 seconds, but the patient felt nothing thanks to the ether he had been administered. He woke up a few minutes later asking when the procedure would begin. In the audience that day was Joseph Lister, who would become one of Britain’s most admired surgeons.

Lister came from a Quaker family and, after being educated at University College London, started his career in Edinburgh. Different to many medical professionals of the time, he was fascinated by microscopy and determined to find out what caused deadly infections. Carbolic acid and catgut ligatures were two of Lister’s main innovations that helped to fight infection. In fact, whether we realize it or not, his legacy is forever associated with antiseptics: Listerine mouthwash (invented in 1879) is named after him, and the Johnson brothers of Johnson & Johnson fame started their business mass-producing sterile surgical dressings after attending one of Lister’s lectures.

My interest tailed off a bit after the first third, as the book starts going into more depth about Lister’s work and personal life: he married his boss’s daughter and moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow and then back to London. However, the best is yet to come: the accounts of the surgeries he performed on his sister (a mastectomy that bought her three more years of life) and Queen Victoria (removing an orange-sized abscess from under her arm) are terrific. The chapter on treating the queen in secret at Balmoral Castle in 1871 was my overall favorite.

I was that kid who loved going to Civil War battlefields and medical museums and looking at all the different surgical saws and bullet fragments in museum cases, so I reveled in the gory details here but was not as interested in the biographical material. Do be sure you have a strong stomach before you try reading the prologue over a meal. This is a comparable read to The Remedy, about the search for a cure to tuberculosis.

If you’ve ever used the bright blue or green mouthwash with the antiseptic taste, then you have benefitted from the expertise of Joseph Lister. More importantly, if you’ve had surgery in a spotlessly clean operating room with a surgeon gowned and gloved up, you owe that to Joseph Lister. Lindsey Fitzharris tells his story The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine.

Lister began his surgical journey at a time when the two most desired qualities of a surgeon were speed and strength. The speed to cut (very often an amputation) as quickly as possible. This was needed because no anesthesia was used—it hadn’t been discovered yet. And the strength to hold the limb, pull it a specific way, and cut at the same time. As Fitzharris says in the book’s subtitle, it was absolutely grisly. Surgeons were more like butchers than skilled practitioners, and their experience often came from battlefields.

During his youth, Lister also learned a great deal about microscopes from his father. The senior Lister had a passion for making them work, and passed on this fascination to his son. Thus, the younger Lister’s lifelong work was established strongly in the investigative sciences.

Yet Lister also cared about his surgical patients’ survival. His initial training was in London, a city with a tremendous reputation for surgery. In the Victorian era, it was also an extremely dirty city. The quantity of people combined with industry affected everyone no matter their social class.

Despite the success of the actual operation, a significant portion of London’s surgical patients died from post-operative infections. Medical professionals believed infection was caused by all kinds of things. But none of those things included germs, cross-contamination between patients, or lack of sterile surgical environments.

Lister was obsessed with the scientific reason for infections, including a desire to find a solution. Fitzharris explains how each step of his career path affected the outcome of his research. She details the research into microorganisms he performed. And she discusses how the his mentors helped him, while his detractors simultaneously bedeviled his efforts. At first Lister just had to convince the people in charge of his ward and hospital. But ultimately, Lister knew he had to convince surgeons around the country, the continent, and the world.

Lister’s story is as much about how a scientific innovation becomes commonplace as it is about the actual practice of using antiseptics in medicine. It was a rocky road. At first, Lister tried publishing his findings in the medical journals of the time. After meeting with much resistance, he realized that his method needed to be taught in a hands-on manner. So he adjusted his approach and began with his own medical students. From there, the concepts began to gain traction.

Fitzharris shows how Lister progressed from a medical student with a stutter to a man of stature in his profession. For a fundamentally unassuming man, Lister’s persistence changed the world. He changed surgery from something that generally killed the patient to a mostly successful part of many people’s lives.

I found The Butchering Art to be readable, interesting, and even inspiring. Having been a surgical patient last year, I couldn’t help but put myself in the dismal shoes of Fitzharris’ early examples. And I certainly gave a words of thanks to Joseph Lister for his persistence and perspicacity. I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of medicine and surgery.

Thanks to NetGalley, Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Lindsey Fitzharris for the opportunity to read the digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

historical-places-events, medical, horror, nonfiction, surgery, infections ----------
If you thought battlefield surgery was brutal long before the present, hospital surgery and care was just as horrendous. In detailing the influences and motivations of the most influential doctor of the 19th century with regards to sepsis and antisepsis the reader is immersed in the horrors that comprised the hospital care of the day. If one is naive enough to believe that nosocomial infections are only a product of careless use of antibiotics today, this will set the record straight. It was a hard-won victory to convince such a hide bound profession to accept as truth what the microscope proved. Along the way the reader is given a glimpse of the judicial system and the horrors of the industrial revolution. Extremely well researched and graphically written.
Two disclaimers: I have been a RN since 1968. Also, I had originally requested and received a free review copy via NetGalley, but was unable to sight read it. Recently I bought an audio copy and feel that Ralph Lister gave an exceptional audio performance as narrator. I also feel that his British accent is a definite plus.

Review on website pending... Wicked Book Love.

Bottom line - we need more books like this.

After reading this book, I shall forever look closely at novels set in the 19th century to see how they treat the subject of hospitals and medicine. If it's set in the early 19th century and there is anything approaching hygiene, then it's probably not very accurate. If it's in the 1860s to 1870s, then I'd expect to see a debate about how diseases are spread and how surgeries are carried out.

The Butchering Art is the story of how medicine changed for the better, thanks to the efforts of Joseph Lister. At a time where the field of medicine had the wrong ideas of how diseases spread and the risk of surgery could be higher than the risk of not being operated on (there is one surgery which had a 300% fatality rate - patient, assistant, and bystander), Joseph Lister's discoveries and his creation of an antiseptic system/procedure made things much safer for everyone.

While Joseph Lister is the principal focus of the book, the author also includes enough explanation of the field of medicine at the time and the people who influenced him, which made me appreciate how ideas are not born in a vacuum. It also helped me to see how timely and important these discoveries were, and contextualised them.

This memoir is very well-written, flowing through time and introducing many different people without being confusing. It's also very easy to read (aka not overwhelming the way some non-fiction books are). Even though I had less than a cursory knowledge of this period of time, I found myself being able to follow the events of what was going on and ended up reading this in one go.

If you're interested in the history of medicine, you'll want to pick up this book. The discovery of germs and how to prevent infections marked a turning point in turning hospitals from being houses of death to places of healing.

Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

This is such a well written and fascinating book. The author always brings up the context of what is happening in Joseph Lister's world. Warning: prepare to tell people around you the interesting facts you get from this book. Like the surgeons didn't think it was a problem to go from cutting open a dead person to help delivering a baby without washing their hands.

I loved this! It is so readable and utterly fascinating. Anyone interested in medical history or just Victorian history should definitely pick this up.
I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Posted on Goodreads, my blog and shared to social media

These days a small cut wouldn’t warrant a trip to the hospital, let alone a trip to the local doctor. You’d clean the wound with antiseptic before wrapping it up, leaving it to heal in a couple of days. But 150 years ago, a small cut could be a death sentence, without modern antiseptics to clean the wound.

The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris documents the life of Joseph Lister, pioneering surgeon and father of antisepsis. You might recognise his name from products like Listerine, but he’s not actually the inventor of the now famous mouth wash. Instead Lister, working from Pasteur’s germ theory, created a process for the clean hospital to reduce post-operative bacteria and infections.

To set the scene, Victorian era hospitals were a literal cesspool of infection. Dogs and rats under operating tables. Human organs on the floor. Not to mention the piss and the encroaching dead from nearby cemeteries. Fitzharris does a neat job of setting up the effluent world of Victorian medicine. This book is not for the squeamish. Tales of violent hand-held amputations, mastectomies and tumor operations without anaesthesia. It’s a wonder people lived through any operations at all.

Following these operations was the threat of hospital infections. Gangrene, erysipelas, septicemia and pyemia made for a delightful cocktail of ulcers, pus and blood.

Surgery was not the highly-paid profession that it is today. It evolved from local barbers who would perform operations. Yet this particular era sees the coming together of both scientific rigour and practical operations, something that Lister particularly valued with his emphasis on using the microscope to study surgery (surprisingly laughable in the era – I mean who would ever use a microscope for science?).

This short book is a little top heavy on exposition of the era, such as detail on the World’s Fair and deportation of criminals to Australia. It’s when the book gets deeply into Lister’s life that it shines. Born to Quaker parents, science was one of the few areas of entertainment available to Lister. This childhood passion followed through to Lister’s adult decision to study medicine. While you’re not going to find any rock n’ roll tales of dodgy doctors a la The Knick, there’s plenty of gruesome details to make up for any lack of controversy in Lister’s home life.

What’s inspiring about Lister’s life was his near-reluctance to become a surgeon, a career choice encouraged by his scientific father and surgical mentors. It’s a tribute to the power of having good people in your life. I would have liked to read more about his failures as well as his successes. His obsession with carbolic acid became troublesome for those in his operating theatre. But in the end, Lister’s choice has saved millions of lives, and transformed hospitals as we know them.

There are very few books in recent years on Victorian medicine. The Butchering Art is a valuable contribution to a rarely covered topic. I really appreciate the depth of the research evident in the detailed bibliography, which will make a wonderful starting point for my own fictional research in the era. If you’re interested in this period, I also recommend reading a hard copy of Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles & Practice of Nineteenth Century Surgery.

Speed and spectacle typified British surgery in the first half of the 19th century. The operating theater no doubt got its name from the audience it drew from curious laypeople right off the streets although naturally the first rows and floor area were crowded with medical students. A surgeon might not be able to operate until he had enough space. Frustrated audience in the back rows yelled, “Heads, heads!” when people in front obscured their view.


We forget the major impacts that our understanding—of science, medicine and technology, for instance—have had on culture. The Butchering Art reminds the reader that even such details as how people got hurt, how they endured large tumors over years of growth or operations for the same, and what they believed did and did not cause illness have radically altered. We would be shocked at what people argued about over the dinner table and at staff meetings!


Just before the mid-19th century, “Hospitalism” was a coined phrase understood to refer to the increase of infection and suppuration brought on by “the big four” killers in hospitals: gangrene, septicemia, “pyemia” (development of pus-filled abscesses) and erysipelas (a streptococcus infection of the skin, i.e. St. Anthony’s Fire).


Those in the medical field knew that hospitalism was a highly likely recurring event at large urban hospitals but they did not know why. Because infections were so prevalent in big hospitals, some doctors were proponents of patients being treated in their own homes or at the doctors’ offices. Understandably, however, it was easier for doctors to perform surgeries and for nurses to watch over patients in big hospitals, but within those confines, medical staff argued about how contagion spread, giving rise to two groups—“contagionists” and “anti-contagionists.”


Contagionists believed in contagion that went from person to person. Contagionists had an assortment of theories, including invisible bullets of disease. Anti-contagionists indignantly pointed to the squalor of the living conditions of the poor as well as the disgusting state of streets in large urban areas (London) Miasma was blamed for the spread of disease.


Set against this background of ideas comes Joseph Lister, upon whose life Lindsey Fitzharris brings her own microscope study upon the life of Joseph Lister, the British surgeon of Quaker background who was noted (and knighted) for his studies and promotion of antiseptic surgery and sterilization. However, in The Butchering Art, the author begins with Robert Liston, who was noted for his speed and dexterity, if not for the survival rate of patients (poor at best) due to the fact that no one yet understood how infection occurred. Since there was nothing to render the patient unconscious either, the best surgeons were fast. Liston, Fitzharris tells us, “could remove a leg in less than thirty seconds.” Speed had its drawbacks, as when Listen sliced off the testicle along with the leg being amputated.


Joseph Lister, as it happens, was witness to Liston’s use of ether, giving rise to the claim that patients would not suffer pain during surgery. There was still nothing yet that could prevent their falling prey to infection, which was expected. Pus was part of the healing process, but the healing process often led to death.


This fascinating book held me in its grip. Fitzharris does a wonderful job of coloring in the concepts of the culture, depicting the smells and images of England and Scotland, all while demonstrating that there was both wondrous good and nearly insurmountable ego involved in the medical profession—and either trait could kill a person as easily as cure. How a surgeon like Lister ever got the rest of the medical field to listen, (for there is hardly any profession less proud than that of surgeons) when the principles he applied saved lives put others in his shadow, is a true marvel. @fsgbooks

My hardback copy is here!
I was fortunate enough to receive an ARC of this through NetGalley, and seriously, the second I finished it, I went and preordered it. This is one of the best and my favorite books of the year!
Even though I just read this, I'm already rereading this.
In short, This book really delves into the Victorian surgery practices and thanks to Joseph Lister, for forever changing what we know about surgery today. Seriously highlighted and now tabbing seems like half of the book. So fascinating and well researched.
Looking through the hardback copy, there is an index in the back and around 30 pages of notes on where the research came from!
I would recommend this to anyone interested in medical, history, science, an amazing well-researched biography....ok nevermind-I would recommend this to everyone.

Can't wait to see Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris speak at the Winchester House on Oct 20 :).

Also, you can check out her Youtube channel, all about past medical practices https://www.youtube.com/user/UnderTheKnifeShow

Cant thank Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris and Farrar, Straus and Giroux enough for allowing me to read and review this book for an honest opinion through Netgalley.

(Will post on Amazon, Goodreads, Instagram, and Litsy)

I enjoyed this book. The writer paints a picture that I feel was excellent and look forward to telling my friends and family about this book

“Heroic medicine” is well named. Prior to the advent of anesthetics, patients were awake and aware for surgical procedures. The pain and horror of feeling a surgeon cutting into your body is something we now associate with a nightmare. Going through asurgery was nearly as likely to kill you as not receiving treatment at all. With the discovery of ether, surgeons no longer had to restrict their operations to procedures which could be completed in minutes. With the field of surgery becoming ever more ambitious, post-surgical infections became the chief danger to patients. In a time before germ theory was accepted, opinions and practices used to treat or prevent infections (laudable pus, anyone?) varied widely, and with little success. In the 1860s, Quaker surgeon Joseph Lister set about trying to determine scientifically the causes of post-surgical infections, and how to best prevent these deadly conditions.

Lindsey Fitzharris gives us a great view of Victorian medical practice, and of the scientific and medical theories and traditions that made the prevention of nosocomial (hospital-induced) infections so difficult. The Butchering Art is both a history and a biography. The book earns a place next to The Knife Man by Wendy Moore (about contemporaneous surgeon John Hunter) and The Ghost Map by Stephen Johnson (about Dr. John Snow, who helped trace a cholera outbreak in London to a single water pump).

Any history buff interested in the history of medicine will enjoy this book. More casual readers will likely also find this book to be entertaining and accessible. Beware though, Fitzharris provides several very accurate and vivid descriptions of Victorian-era surgeries, so the book is decidedly not for the faint of heart.

An advance copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve been following medical historian Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris on Instagram for months because, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I am fascinated by the bloody, brilliant history of trying to make people well (and how it frequently went awry). When I saw her book, The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, listed on NetGalley, I leapt to request it. The Butchering Art is full of the kind of medical history that I find perfectly engrossing (heh) because it’s written in clear, honest language with plenty of case histories, and thoroughly documented from primary sources.

Fitzharris begins her book with surgeon Robert Liston performing an amputation using the newest medical innovation: ether. Liston had trained as a surgeon in the years when speed was the best attribute one could have. Liston was able, at the height of his career, to remove arms and legs in a matter of minutes. Ether allowed surgeons to take their time and perform more complicated procedures. Unfortunately, because ether encouraged surgeons to cut more often, the rate of hospital infections soared. Most surgeons—according to this very credible account—shrugged off infection as inevitable. The ones who were willing to experiment were usually reluctant to believe in the new germ theory of disease and would hare off in all sorts of wrong directions. As Fitzharris frequently points out, a lot of surgeons thought there was such a thing as “laudable pus.”

Joseph Lister was very much a proponent of germ theory, based on his own experiments and his reading of the work of Louis Pasteur. Lister had been interested in microscopes from a young age, which might have made it easier for him to believe the wild theory that floating, invisible creatures would cause disease and infection. After studying at University College London, Lister moved to Edinburgh to study at the Royal Infirmary and James Syme.

For the rest of his life, Lister would experiment with antisepsis techniques and wound dressing. His work really did revolutionize the medical world. While his articles for The Lancet and other journals mostly aroused anger and controversy, Lister’s teaching in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London created a new generation of surgeons and doctors who were thoroughly versed in antisepsis.

Fitzharris does a wonderful job of recreating the world of mid-Victorian surgery, with plenty of disgusting and fascinating details about filth, medicine, and innovation. (She is also careful about giving credit where credit is due to other early proponents of germ theory, like poor Ignatz Semmelweis.) The Butchering Art is so well done that it could have been longer and I wouldn’t have minded a bit. I am definitely going to recommend this book to other readers who enjoy reading about the highs and lows of medical history—and can handle the gory stuff.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for review consideration. It will be released 17 October 2017.

I loved this book. It was part history, part medical history, and part biography. The book follows the path of Dr Lister who pioneered the stop of spreading germs during surgery. It delves into how surgeries were performed in hospitals and at home, how high the fatality rate was when surgery was performed, and the general conditions of European hospitals in the 1800's. The author was detailed, dramatic, and I felt that the book was well researched. BRILLIANT Book for anyone curious about medical history!

This book was everything a non-fiction book should be. Intriguing content, fast paced, and constantly keeping the reader at peak interest. I would like to say, DO NOT READ THIS WHILE EATING. Seriously, its pretty gory, the last book that made my stomach roll was 120 Days of Sodom. But please do not let that deter you!

I was compelled to request this book because of how much I loved Destiny of the Republic. Joseph Lister’s antiseptic method is discussed in a good portion of the book and ultimately could have been used to save James A. Garfield’s life. I was not dissapointed in my choice! Linsdsey Fitzharris’s writing is so accessible and in a way I could hear this book being narrated as a History Channel documentary.

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