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The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris6/29/2023 However, patients were still dying of post-surgical infections in high numbers, and Louis Pasteur’s ideas about germs were still academic and not widely disseminated. The introduction of ether to British medicine in 1846 was a critical turning point because it afforded surgeons more time to perform procedures. In the early 1800s, a surgeon was little more than a butcher, a “manual laborer who used his hands to make a living, much like a key cutter or plumber today.” It didn’t help that surgery was extremely risky for patients. Joseph Lister’s choice to become a surgeon was not the most obvious or reputable one for a Quaker growing up as the son of an esteemed scientist acclaimed for his improvements to the microscope. Medical historian and popular blogger Fitzharris narrates the quest of a tenacious 19th-century doctor to save his patients in the process, he transformed the world of surgery and medicine.
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