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

by Lindsey Fitzharris

They dressed fashionably—almost gaudily—except for their distinctly grimy shirts. They walked around with cigars hanging from their mouths: an indulgence, but one that was a necessity for masking the smell of decay that permeated their clothes after time spent in the dissection room.

As if the inevitable outcome needed underlining, the surgeon added, “He died.”

Once again, death had cleared the way for another man’s advancement.

brutal

There was also eighteen-year-old Joseph Neille, who was working at a local munitions factory when he placed a tin flask that he had thought contained tea onto the fire. Only after it was too late did he realize the flask was actually filled with two pounds of gunpowder.

i hate when that happens

“How dare you hand me a knife to use upon this poor man that you would not like to have used on yourself?”