I have always been interested in the history of medicine, particularly the ways in which historical methods are portrayed to be inferior to modern medicine. As a historian, I am alternately amused and horrified at the way we go overboard in discarding historical methods of healthcare, ridding ourselves of perfectly useful techniques, drugs, and therapies. The more I learn about older curative methods, the more I’ve become sensitive to the knowledge and technologies that have been lost. At the same time, I am fascinated by new technologies, and find anesthesia particularly captivating as a technique that improved survival and recovery from what had previously been deadly conditions.
In 1862 London, the body of a famous surgeon is found in an old operating theatre. The bookish Inspector Slaughter must discover the killer with help from Nightingale nurses, surgeon's dressers, devious apothecaries, and even stage actors in a world where anesthesia is new, working-class audiences enjoy Shakespeare, and women reformers solve society's problems.
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.
Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly A Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian
"Warning: She spares no detail!" —Erik Larson, bestselling author of Dead Wake
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. She conjures up early operating theaters—no place for the squeamish—and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and…
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.
The introduction of anaesthesia to Victorian Britain marked a defining moment between modern medicine and earlier practices. This book uses new information from John Snow's casebooks and London hospital archives to revise many of the existing historical assumptions about the early history of surgical anaesthesia. By examining complex patterns of innovation, reversals, debate and geographical difference, Stephanie Snow shows how anaesthesia became established as a routine part of British medicine.
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.
Ties in to a fantastic new four-part BBC series from the makers of the hit Victorian Farm
Shows how many products on sale in our high street chemists today can trace their origins back to nineteenth century formulations
Full of fascinating facts, remedies and recipes to try at home
Victorian Farm sold over 40,000 copies (Nielsen Bookscan figures)
This is the story of consumer medicine - how high street healthcare emerged in just 50 years and how we still rely on hundreds of formulations and products that can trace their origins back to the nineteenth century.
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.
Written by the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, Notes of Nursing was the first book of its kind. It was originally published when the simple rules of health were only beginning to be known. Its topics were of vital importance for the well-being and recovery of patients, when hospitals were riddled with infection.
In this edition, Mark Stinson adds his commentary, writing that this book "portrays the background for understanding the historical evolution from Nightingale’s experiences and sine qa non of her day to today’s utilization of evidence-based medicine in healthcare. The Nightingale legacy is also a call to…
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.
The name of Thomas Crapper, the inventor 100 years ago of the flushing lavatory, is commemorated on toilet cisterns throughout Britain. "Flushed With Pride" reveals the story of his remarkable life and his struggle to reform the nation's water closets.
Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
Long before Trump, each of these phenomena grew in importance. The John Birch Society and McCarthyism became powerful forces; Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first “personal president” to rise above the party; and the development of what Harry Truman called “the big lie,” where outrageous falsehoods came to be believed. Trump follows a pattern that was long established within the Republican Party. This is an untold story that resonates powerfully in the present.
Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism
It didn't begin with Donald Trump. The unraveling of the Grand Old Party has been decades in the making. Since the time of FDR, the Republican Party has been home to conspiracy thinking, including a belief that lost elections were rigged. And when Republicans later won the White House, the party elevated their presidents to heroic status-a predisposition that eventually posed a threat to democracy. Building on his esteemed 2016 book, What Happened to the Republican Party?, John Kenneth White proposes to explain why this happened-not just the election of Trump but the authoritarian shift in the party as a…
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