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Houses of death: the horror of life in a Victorian hospital

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

The Butchering Art

DAILY MAIL, GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 
 
Winner of the 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing 
Shortlisted for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize 
Shortlisted for the 2018 Wolfson Prize 
 
The 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. While the discovery of anaesthesia somewhat lessened the misery for patients, ironically it led to more deaths, as surgeons took greater risks. In squalid, overcrowded hospitals, doctors remained baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. 
 
At a time when surgery couldn't have been more dangerous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: Joseph Lister, a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon. By making the audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection - and could be treated with antiseptics - he changed the history of medicine forever. 
 
With a novelist's eye for detail, Fitzharris brilliantly conjures up the grisly world of Victorian surgery, revealing how one of Britain's greatest medical minds finally brought centuries of savagery, sawing and gangrene to an end.

Gruesomely compelling ... A fascinating account

Gloriously pulsating ... [Fitzharris] has an eye for morbid detail, visceral imagery and comic potential. From out of this hellish vision, Lister emerges as the cool, modern, scientific saviour to whom we should all give thanks

Atmospheric ... The Butchering Art has its share of resplendent gore

Thoroughly enjoyable ... With The Butchering Art, Fitzharris explores the intersection of Lister's life, the development of antiseptic surgery, and the horrors of the wards with an almost surgical precision

The Butchering Art is a formidable achievement - a rousing take 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

Brilliant ... Thanks to Lister's dogged pursuit of knowledge and fervent attention to the needs of surgical patients, death rates plummeted. Fitzharris tells this story with an equal attention to detail

Scintillating and shocking ... A book full of gangrene, pus and hideous pain, which will make you thankful never to suffer the horror of having a tumour removed from your jaw with no pain relief

Hugely entertaining and informative ... Fitzharris brings [Joseph Lister's] sensibility to life with great energy and elegance, and her account is vivid and entertaining, as well as enjoyably (and sometimes eye-wateringly) graphic. The result is rich with anecdote and intellectual excitement, replete with emotional resonance and narrative pleasure

An illuminating and grisly look at the work of hacksaw-wielding surgeons of the 19th century

Well researched and written with verve... A fine read full of vivid detail, prompting thoughtful reflection on the past, and the challenging future, of surgical practice

A lively read, constantly entertaining ... Fitzharris is an unapologetic showman. I imagine her as a ringmaster, inviting us to roll up and read if we dare

A brilliant and gripping account of the almost unimaginable horrors of surgery and  post-operative infection before 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

Engaging and extensively researched ... A riveting and sympathetic description of one man's quest to help humanity

Electric. The drama of Lister's mission to shape modern medicine is as exciting as any novel

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!

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

An absolutely fascinating and grisly read that vividly brings to life the world of the Victorian operating theatre

Fitzharris slices into medical history with this excellent biography of Joseph Lister, the 19th-century "hero of surgery." ... 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

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 horror 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

bestselling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity

Fascinating and shocking ... [Fitzharris] 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

The Butchering Art, with its attention to detail, its admiration for its subject and its unflinching sympathy for the suffering, proposes a causal chain - running through the history of human sickness and not yet at its end - in which Lister forms a strong and vital link

Lindsey Fitzharris received her doctorate in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford and was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Wellcome Institute. She is the creator of the popular website The Chirurgeon's Apprentice, and she writes and presents the YouTube series Under the Knife. She has written for the Guardian, the Lancet, the New Scientist, Penthouse, the Huffington Post and Medium, and appeared on PBS, Channel 4 UK, BBC and National Geographic.

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, and surgeons were still known to ransack cemeteries to find cadavers. And in squalid, overcrowded hospitals, doctors remained baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. 
 
At a time when surgery couldn't have been more dangerous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: Joseph Lister, a young Quaker surgeon. By making the audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection - and could be treated with antiseptics - he changed the history of medicine forever. With a novelist's eye for detail, Fitzharris brilliantly conjures up the grisly world of Victorian surgery, revealing how one of Britain's greatest medical minds finally brought centuries of savagery, sawing and gangrene to an end.

Lindsey Fitzharris

In this fascinating book, Fitzharris reminds us there is nothing superficial about plastic surgery's ability to heal minds as well as bodies. Five stars

Scholarly yet deeply moving... This is a fascinating book about a remarkable man, and of how teamwork is such an important part of good surgery. Despite the grim subject matter, it is a deeply moving and uplifting story

Careful...  sensitive... [Fitzharris] has successfully pieced together the story of a team of doctors, hospital workers and patients "battling" together during the First World War to modernize reconstructive plastic surgery... Fitzharris constructs a variegated and tender account of the First World War, its brutality and its narratives of human redemption... Tenderness and pathos pervade the personal stories of surgery and recovery, as well as Fitzharris's engagement with the ethics of facial difference and display

The Facemaker is an engaging biography of a masterful surgeon as well as a heartening account of medical progress

Sometimes distressing, sometimes thrilling, The Facemaker had me gripped; it is elegantly written and endlessly fascinating. Employing just the right balance between diligent research and ingenious reanimation, Fitzharris brings to life a neglected slice of medical history, telling both Gillies' story as well as that of many of the men whose faces - and lives - he saved

Engrossing... Fitzharris presents an intensely moving and hugely enjoyable story about a remarkable medical pioneer and the men he remade

A skilled storyteller, Fitzharris takes the reader back to the front, making them trudge and slide through mud filled with missing limbs to find the people who stagger into Gillies's casebooks... Properly contextualised, these faces become not objects of horror or surgery, as they have been all too often used, but pathways into understanding what it is to lose a face, and with it, not only the ability to eat, drink and breathe, but also social acceptance and love

With rich, glossy strokes The Facemaker restores a sense of immediacy to the daily struggles facing Gillies and his colleagues as they improvised under constant pressure

Out of war's most awful wounds, out of gore and terror and pain, Lindsey Fitzharris has - like Sir Harold Gillies himself - crafted something inspiring and downright miraculous. I cannot imagine the sweat and sleuthing and doggedness that went into gathering the details and building the narratives of these men's struggles. This book is riveting. It is gruesome but it is also uplifting. For as much as there is blood and bone and pus in these pages, there is heart. As Fitzharris shows us, the scalpel is mightier than the grenade, and the pen is mightiest of all. What a triumph this book is

Like Harold Gillies himself, Lindsey Fitzharris has taken something we might think of as grim and transformed it into something beautiful. Gillies will be an unsung hero no more

Wow, what a book. Enthralling. Harrowing. Heartbreaking. And utterly redemptive. Lindsey Fitzharris hit this one out of the park

Erik Larson, author of THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE

Here is that rare thing: a little-known story of the Great War, featuring a pioneering surgeon every bit as daring as the soldiers he saved. Beautifully written, illuminating, and bursting with fascinating detail, The Facemaker is a groundbreaking work that deserves its own genre: medical noir. You won't be able to put it down

Karen Abbott, author of THE GHOSTS OF EDEN PARK

I was an admirer of Fitzharris's award-winning first book, The Butchering Art, about Joseph Lister. This is her absorbing account of another surgeon: Harold Gillies, who established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction

Equal parts devastating and inspiring. The horrors of war are laid bare here, but the stories of each of the soldiers, doctors, nurses, and artists are incredibly poignant and fascinating. I couldn't put it down

An extraordinary story about a remarkable man whose work, determination and skill changed countless lives

Peter Frankopan, author of THE SILK ROADS

Graphic yet inspiring, engaging... [Fitzharris] delivers a consistently vivid account... An excellent biography of a genuine miracle worker

Wonderful... It was written with a clarity that I loved - although the book is packed with fascinating information, it read as easily as a novel... It is really inspiring and beautifully written

A fascinating portrait of pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies and the soldiers whose faces he rebuilt during WWI... Meticulously researched and compulsively readable, this exceptional history showcases how compassion and innovation can help mitigate the terrible wounds of war

Sometimes, you just know. From the moment I read The Facemaker's excellent prologue, I knew I had a book on my hands... Fitzharris is a gifted storyteller and delights in just about the right amount of detail

Informative... A powerful portrait of a gifted man

The Facemaker conveys the emotional, physical and psychical effects of having an injured and altered face, directly from those who had to deal with them... Powerful

In The Facemaker, Fitzharris rescues another vital yet largely forgotten figure from history. Blending scrupulous research with a novelist's eye, the author charts Gillies's extraordinary contribution to reconstructive surgery and weaves in touching accounts of the soldiers he treated. Stark and occasionally unsettling, the book reveals Gillies as both a craftsman and an artist, and underlines how by restoring the faces of the maimed Gillies was also restoring their lives and identities

One Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. The war's new weaponry, from tanks to shrapnel, enabled slaughter on an industrial scale, and given the nature of trench warfare, thousands of soldiers sustained facial injuries. Medical advances meant that more survived their wounds than ever before, yet disfigured soldiers did not receive the hero's welcome they deserved. 
 
In The Facemaker, award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris tells the astonishing story of the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to restoring the faces - and the identities - of a brutalized generation. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction in Sidcup, south-east England. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of doctors, nurses and artists whose task was to recreate what had been torn apart. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely intolerant of disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also their spirits. 
 
Meticulously researched and grippingly told, The Facemaker places Gillies's ingenious surgical innovations alongside the poignant stories of soldiers whose lives were wrecked and repaired. The result is a vivid account of how medicine and art can merge, and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless horror.

Lindsey Fitzharris

Praise for The Facemaker

In this fascinating book, Fitzharris reminds us there is nothing superficial about plastic surgery's ability to heal minds as well as bodies. Five stars

Scholarly yet deeply moving... This is a fascinating book about a remarkable man, and of how teamwork is such an important part of good surgery. Despite the grim subject matter, it is a deeply moving and uplifting s ...

Careful... sensitive... [Fitzharris] has successfully pieced together the story of a team of doctors, hospital workers and patients "battling" together during the First World War to modernize reconstructive plastic ...

In this fascinating book, Fitzharris reminds us there is nothing superficial about plastic surgery's ability to heal minds as well as bodies. Five stars

Scholarly yet deeply moving... This is a fascinating book about a remarkable man, and of how teamwork is such an important part of good surgery. Despite the grim subject matter, it is a deeply moving and uplifting s ...

Careful... sensitive... [Fitzharris] has successfully pieced together the story of a team of doctors, hospital workers and patients "battling" together during the First World War to modernize reconstructive plastic ...

In this fascinating book, Fitzharris reminds us there is nothing superficial about plastic surgery's ability to heal minds as well as bodies. Five stars

Scholarly yet deeply moving... This is a fascinating book about a remarkable man, and of how teamwork is such an important part of good surgery. Despite the grim subject matter, it is a deeply moving and uplifting s ...

Careful... sensitive... [Fitzharris] has successfully pieced together the story of a team of doctors, hospital workers and patients "battling" together during the First World War to modernize reconstructive plastic ...

Books by Lindsey Fitzharris

Articles featuring Lindsey Fitzharris

Houses of death: the horror of life in a Victorian hospital

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