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

by Lindsey Fitzharris

Like many surgeons operating in a pre-anesthetic era, Liston had learned to steel himself against the cries and protests of those strapped to the blood-spattered operating table. On one occasion, Liston’s patient, who had come in to have a bladder stone removed, ran from the room in terror and locked himself in the lavatory before the procedure could begin. Liston, hot on his heels, broke the door down and dragged the screaming patient back to the operating room. There, he bound the man fast before passing a curved metal tube up the patient’s penis and into the bladder. He then slid a finger into the man’s rectum, feeling for the stone. Once Liston had located it, his assistant removed the metal tube and replaced it with a wooden staff, which acted as a guide so the surgeon wouldn’t fatally rupture the patient’s rectum or intestines as he began cutting deep into the bladder. Once the staff was in place, Liston cut diagonally through the fibrous muscle of the scrotum until he reached the wooden staff. Next, he used the probe to widen the hole, ripping open the prostate gland in the process. At this point, he removed the wooden staff and used forceps to extract the stone from the bladder. Liston—who reportedly had the fastest knife in the West End—achieved all this in just under sixty seconds.