The Butchering Art
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine is a 2017 historical nonfiction book by Lindsey Fitzharris that discusses the evolution of Victorian era medicine between the 1840s and 1870s, along with how surgeon Joseph Lister revolutionized the practice of surgery to reduce the extremely high death rates of the time period. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 17, 2017, the book includes graphic descriptions of operating theaters and the unclean conditions of hospitals and other facilities at the time. The book was given the 2018 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and was shortlisted for both the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and the 2018 Wolfson History Prize. Content The book is split into a prologue, eleven chapters, and an epilogue. The prologue discusses a general overview of the time period as an "age of agony" that was nearing its end thanks to the emergence of Joseph Lister. Each subsequent chapter covers an ongoing history of Lister's life from childhood onward, with vignettes interspersed with other events and accounts of the medical profession during the time period. The coverage of Lister's life is largely based off of Fitzharris' use of his