It is definitely not for the faint of heart. I felt a bit anxious reading it, but I couldn’t put the book down and read it over the weekend.

TW: Blood, pus, graphic description of surgery (including amputations, open fractures and mastectomy), pain and suffering (before the doctors knew anesthesia) and also autopsy of people and animals (it includes some descriptions of autopsy on live animals, especially the one with a dog was difficult to read). That being said, if you suffer from morbid curiosity, this book is a fascinating read about an important part of medical history.

As the subtitle says, the book is about Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine. He was a British surgeon, medical scientist, and a pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventative medicine. Lister researched bacteriology and infection in wounds. Inspired by the work of Louis Pasteur, he then promoted the use of carbolic acid for sterilization. This book is a fascinating story of his life. We learn how important it was that his father, Joseph Jackson Lister, spent his life perfecting microscopes and it became an essential part of Lister’s research. His father was also the person he always asked for advice and it’s evident from the letters they wrote to each other over the years. Besides his father, one of the most important people in Lister’s life and his mentor was James Syme, clinical lecturer at Edinburgh University. And it’s all a long, difficult, but in the end successful journey from  hospitals as houses of death (as they were called) to places of healing.

I also found something exciting and interesting in the acknowledgements (yes, I’m that weirdo that reads them and I will never regret that). So thank you to the author, not only for this brilliant book, but also for reminding me to read The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London by Christopher Skaife.