My favorite books exploring the wonders of Victorian medicine

While purporting to be a book about the horrors of Victorian surgery, The Butchering Art is actually a fascinating exploration into the innovation of hygienic practices and antisepsis as pioneered by Joseph Lister. Among his other achievements, Lister invented carbolic spray, which maintained disinfection over the open cavity of the patient during surgery. With germ theory quite new, many in the medical profession questioned the need for hand washing and special clothing to prevent post-operative infection, which truly did make Victorian surgery frightening.

The development of anesthesia was met with confusion, dismissal, and even derision. While today we are accustomed to the idea of the patient being asleep, at the time it was seen as similar to operating on a dead body. Without the indications of pain or relief, how was the surgeon to feel what he was doing? And in its earliest days, some forms of anesthesia could be dangerous, the patient dying if the dosage wasn’t correct or they had an adverse reaction. But for the patient, and for surgeons who needed more time for an operation, anesthesia was an unequivocal blessing that took away pain and made life-saving procedures possible.

A clever introduction to Victorian pharmaceuticals and remedies, this is a companion book for the popular BBC television series. It provides an explanation of the natural substances used for healing, and how they were made into marketable and regulated medicines for sale at the apothecary shop. The emphasis is on safety, because the authors don’t want you trying arsenic and mercury-based compounds at home, and indeed they leave out a great many useful Victorian remedies, particularly those containing opium! But the knowledge about how apothecary shops worked, and what the pharmacist did to turn plants and other substances into medicine, is invaluable.

Although known for being the “Lady with the Lamp” during the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale was also a statistician and tireless crusader for more hygienic conditions in hospitals both temporary and permanent. This book explains how to nurse a loved one or client at home, and includes advice we should follow today, particularly about ventilation in the sickroom. When she herself became ill later in life, she became a sofa-bound activist, influencing policies via correspondence. Nightingale founded a nursing school at St. Thomas’s Hospital, and the nurse probationers featured in my book attended her school. Mrs. Sarah Wardroper, a character in the novel, was Nightingale’s lieutenant in real life.

Sanitation was a huge influence on health and medical conditions in Victorian London, and the toilet is a perfect example of how an invention can both solve a problem and cause more. Early toilets were more sanitary, but they flushed waste directly into the Thames, along with a lot of water, which ended up requiring a new sewer system. Flushed with Pride tells the story of the popularizer, if not the inventor, of the modern toilet: Thomas Crapper. The book, originally published in 1969, is a fun biography of the man who became the Royal Plumber and an expert marketer of bathroom fixtures.