Surgery was the path of last resort until ether and antiseptics made the procedure relatively painless and safer.
In her engaging examination of what passed for health care in the 19th century, Lindsey Fitzharris, presenter of YouTube’s “Under the Knife,” focuses on Joseph Lister, the British physician who transformed the unsanitary operating rooms of Western medicine into clean places whose attendants were alert to the danger of germs. Lister was a Quaker idealist determined to place his interest in the nascent field of microbiology in service to humankind.
Fitzharris draws a heroic portrait of the doctor who insured that surgery would save more lives than it spent.
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