BUTCHERING ART

Victorian operating theatres were known as 'gateways of death': half of those who underwent surgery didn't survive. Despite anaesthesia, doctors remained baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. Then a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon called Joseph Lister made the audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection - and could be treated with antiseptics. 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.