The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

"If you like that kind of thing! This book is not for the squeamish. It’s rather visceral. It’s about Victorian surgery and it’s fascinating. I’m very intrigued and interested in learning about the history of surgery, and especially about Joseph Lister, the father of antiseptic. He was a real pioneer, working on the margins between science and medicine, and doing wonderful things to move us on. These early surgeons were operating on the dividing line between life and death—and mostly death, it would appear. This young scholar has a very lively style. She has used a lot of primary material, and made the work accessible, perhaps too accessible at times, for the general reader. Absolutely, but that isn’t the only thing that they’ve got to do, because they also have to be significant. You can be really keen on something which is of rather narrow interest to most people. It doesn’t mean that you’re not doing something worthwhile, if you do actually write such a book. But the Wolfson is about giving the possibility to large numbers of people to read very, very worthwhile historical books. Simply the courage and determination of scientists to take risks, to work on the margins, and to discover life-saving information from which we benefit today. Many of us wouldn’t be around, if Joseph Lister hadn’t been around and antiseptics hadn’t been discovered. It can’t possibly be regarded as abstruse, esoteric information. It’s bang in the middle of what keeps us alive. Oh my goodness me, absolutely. Look at the Crimean War and how many people died—not on the battlefield, but from their septic wounds."