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The Butchering Art
- Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
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Publisher's Summary
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.
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- Lenka Chvatal
- 2021-02-01
Very enjoyable
You gotta be ok listening to some pretty gruesome stories, but that was reality. It was well written, well read and very informative. Very much enjoyed it.
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- Amy
- 2020-12-09
Enjoyed it
Cool perspective and educational book on the development of modern medical practices and the struggle of a brilliant thinker to break through the concrete minds of the science and medical community. Lindsey is truly fascinated in this field and it shows through this book. I found the book from her podcast with Joe Rogan which I wholeheartedly reccomend.
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- caroline
- 2019-10-28
Very interesting
I enjoyed listening to this book about Lister but the reader has an accent which is a little bit difficult as English is my second language. Good book though.
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- heather
- 2020-01-14
So glad I don’t live back then!!!
A great story about how medicine evolved in the 19th century!! Aseptic techniques to anaesthetic and many more discoveries and surgery’s. Cutting a limb off in 60 seconds while the patient is awake!! Kill me now!!!
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- Steven
- 2019-10-30
Wow a wonderful read!
Great writing with a top notch narrator. The book keeps you entranced! You come to understand the people and the era.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2020-09-26
enjoyable bit of the medical history
An excellent telling of the beginnings of modern surgery and hygiene. I knew so little about this before listening to this book and am so pleased to have come across it. A great listen. American accents put on are a little clunky but forgivable because everything else was really very good.
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- RW
- 2018-06-03
Great book!
Loved this book, it was so interesting! The narrator keeps you interested and the book is so well detailed!
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3 people found this helpful
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- JohnS
- 2020-03-06
We've come a long way...
This book is above all a biography of Joseph Lister with a shorter description of the life and contribution of his mentor and father-in-law, James Syme. It is a great history book on the development of antiseptic techniques as applied to surgical procedures.
The narration by Ralph Lister is excellent.
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- Shannon H
- 2019-09-03
Great history, Awesome Narrator
The history is intriguing and accurate, the narrator makes it entertaining. A great read for anyone interested in medical evolution.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Langer MD
- 2019-11-10
Brings familiar names to life
I am a Canadian-trained doctor. We were taught 'History of Medicine', but the acheivements of Joseph Lister got maybe 10 minutes.
This book brings his contribitions to medicine to life. Lindsey Fitzharris vividly describes mid-nineteenth century Britain and paints a picture of an unsafe, derided profession (surgery - filthy, no anaesthesia) brought to respectability and transformed to a safer, necessary option rather than a desperate last resort.
Her writing is clear and liberally sprinkled with quoted comments from contemporaries. Her exhaustive research is evident. This could have been a very dry academic exposé, but it feels like an entertaining true-to-life story.
Ralph Lister is an excellent reader. He does a good job of reading quotes, for example, using bang-on accents (English, Scottish, French, American). His general reading voice reminds me of the quality voice-over narrators we get in TV documentaries, but rarrly in Audiobooks.
The very few flaws in this book (there is a LOT of artistic license taken; some of Fitzharris' phrases are a little awkward) do not detract from it's excellence. 9.5 stars.
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