Inside a Trailblazing Surgeon’s Quest to Reconstruct WWI Soldiers’ Disfigured Faces
A new book profiles Harold Gillies, whose efforts to restore wounded warriors’ visages laid the groundwork for modern plastic surgery… Read More
Facial Reconstructive Surgery In WWI
Bonus Interview: Plastic surgery, war survivors and a visionary doctor
The modern military weapons of the first World War killed millions of soldiers on battlefields and in trenches. They also left 20 million men maimed and disfigured, a fate many felt was worse than death… Read More
Facial Reconstructive Surgery In WWI
Lesson Plan: World War I Plastic Surgery
Medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris, author of “The Facemaker,” provides an introduction to her book and the life of Harold Gillies… Read More
Meet Harold Gillies, the WWI surgeon who rebuilt the faces of injured soldiers
“This was a time when losing a limb made you a hero, but losing a face made you a monster”
Dr Lindsey Fitzharris talks to Rhiannon Davies about her book on a pioneering plastic surgeon who rebuilt men’s shattered faces during the First World War… Read More
Screams, torture and so much blood: The gruesome world of 19th-century surgery
‘Have you seen the maggots yet?’ Lindsey Fitzharris on the gruesome history of surgery
The first time Lindsey Fitzharris saw a dead body, she was eight years old. Her great-aunt was embalmed and on display, a common practice at funerals in the American midwest. “My cousin asked me if I wanted to touch her; I was a kid, of course, I did,” she says… Read More
The Gruesome, Bloody World of Victorian Surgery
The Butchering Art: Victorian Medicine, From Blood-Caked Aprons and Body Snatching, to Antiseptic
“Ticketed spectators watched anatomists slice into the distended bellies of decomposing corpses, parts gushing forth not only human blood but also fetid pus. The lilting but incongruous notes of a flute sometimes accompanied the macabre demonstration. Public dissections were theatrical performances,” writes Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris in her new book The Butchering Art… Read More
'The Butchering Art': How A 19th Century Physician Made Surgery Safer
Ignaz Semmelweiss: The Hand Washer Science Stories - Series 9
Lindsey Fitzharris tells the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss. In a world that had no understanding of germs, he saved lives with three simple words, ‘wash your hands’… Listen Now
#1272 - Lindsey Fitzharris
'A grimy operating theatre; a patient who is fully awake. Imagine the terror of that situation': Lindsey Fitzharris on life, death and surgery in the 19th century
SO far, Lindsey Fitzharris tells me, two people have fainted during her book tour. Actually, one of them, a man, keeled over twice… Listen Now
Famous strange demises get a second look in The Curious Life and Death of…
The Pen Ten with Lindsey Fitzharris
The PEN Ten is PEN America’s weekly interview series. In this week’s interview, Davie Loria speaks to medical historian Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art, which won the 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award…. Read More
Famous strange demises get a second look in The Curious Life and Death of…
A Medical Historian Confronts Breast Cancer
After her diagnosis, a writer reflects on how the pain and suffering of generations of women helped lead to today’s medical advances… Read More
How Ether Transformed Surgery from a Race against the Clock
The Unsung Pioneer of Handwashing
In 19th-century Vienna, Ignaz Semmelweis fought to convince his fellow doctors that washing their hands could save patients’ lives… Read More
Crime-Scene Photos Are Lizzie Borden’s Legacy
An infamous 1890s murder trial helped make photography a standard part of detective work… Read More
An appointment at the house of death: the horror of the early Victorian hospital
Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris describes the horrors of the early Victorian hospital, where lice and lethal infections flourished, the air was filled with the smell of vomit and rotting flesh, and all too few of those who went under the surgeon’s knife lived to tell the tale… Read More
'The Butchering Art': How A 19th Century Physician Made Surgery Safer
Britain’s teeth aren’t that bad - but what do you know of their rotten history?
Our dentistry has long been a target for American wits. But at least we never had a leader with only one of his own teeth left… Read More
Bloodletting: Return of a radical remedy
'A grimy operating theatre; a patient who is fully awake. Imagine the terror of that situation': Lindsey Fitzharris on life, death and surgery in the 19th century
SO far, Lindsey Fitzharris tells me, two people have fainted during her book tour. Actually, one of them, a man, keeled over twice… Listen Now
A brief history of ventilation
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