Chandak Sengoopta
Hero of the Hernia
Digging Up the Dead: Uncovering the Life and Times of an Extraordinary Surgeon
By Druin Burch
Chatto & Windus 278pp £20
Surgery today may not always be safe, but it is no longer the bloody, insanitary and excruciating business it was two hundred years ago. Before the coming of anaesthesia and aseptic techniques, an operation often amounted to a death sentence on the patient. Complex internal operations were unimaginable in such unsanitary circumstances, and even the technically simpler forms of surgery could often be fatal because of shock and blood-loss. If the patient survived the operation, he was often killed by a post-operative infection.
In the eighteenth century surgery was anything but a learned profession – one could not even rely on a surgeon’s knowledge of human anatomy. Although all aspiring surgeons received some anatomical training, the teaching was superficial, and often hampered by a scarcity of cadavers for dissection. And learning on the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Interview with Iris Murdoch by John Haffenden via @Lit_Review
I love Helen Garner and this, by @chris_power in @Lit_Review, is excellent.
Yesterday was Fredric Jameson's 90th birthday.
This month's Archive newsletter includes Terry Eagleton on The Political Unconscious, and other pieces from our April 1983 issue.
Terry Eagleton - Supermarket of the Mind
Terry Eagleton: Supermarket of the Mind - The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson
literaryreview.co.uk