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A review by lpm100
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris
dark
informative
fast-paced
5.0
Book Review
"The Butchering Art"
5/5 stars
"EXTREMELY gory, but a good story."
*******
Of the book:
-11 chapters
-235 pages of prose (21pps/chapter)
-≈4 hours of reading time; light and interesting
*******
This book talks about the experience of one man over his lifetime and career trying to make people aware that germs cause infection. And it is almost entirely in the context of the United Kingdom during the industrial Revolution.
There are many, many lessons in this book, and I recommend that it be read as a companion book to
1. "Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations" by Arnold vanDer Laar. (Surgical history.)
2. "Big Fat Surprise" Nina Teichholz. (Political corruption in the research process.)
3. "And the band played on," Randy Shilts. (Political incompetence in public policy/health.)
4. "Apocalypse Never," Michael Shellenberger. (Damage of research quality by political interference.)
It's an interesting property of human beings that: After problems are solved, it's very easy to forget that they ever existed in the first place. (The bad old days before antibiotics are probably not even a century behind us, and that was >99% of human history. And it seems to have been largely forgotten.)
It's an interesting property of human beings that: once old problems are solved, they will spontaneously generate new problems.
-Now that we have figured out about anesthesia/hormones / germs, we have to figure out whether or not it is the most ethical thing to give a teenager with other confounding mental problems a "sex change." This is a problem that nobody could have seen before when at least three quarters of patients would die because of gangrenous amputation.
-The conditions in industrial Revolution England were inconceivably bad, and London was an unspeakably FILTHY place. Now that those conditions are over and forgotten, the biggest problem that companies have is whether or not they have hired enough "Diversity Equity and Inclusion" consultants.
It really makes me wonder "What is the point of solving any problem?" because the next problem seems to me somehow inherent in the solution of the last.
*******
As hard as this is to believe: It was only 150 years ago that modern Germ Theory did not exist, and it was actually a matter of fierce dispute (!) whether or not germs were responsible for post-surgical infections.
And it took a LOT of work to get people to understand that; It was only some time after the US Civil War that it took hold in the United States.
Rather than synopsize the book, I think that there are a number of lessons that we learn from reading it that are useful in current times because they have resonances to so many old mistakes that are being repeated in current times.
1. Just because something is medical consensus as of a moment does not mean that it is true.
-For the events in this book, Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur were in the extreme minority in believing The Germ Theory of disease.
-Psychology is one of those "disciplines" where diseases vanish without a trace between one addition and the next of the DSM.
-As of this year, everybody and his brother is self diagnosing Gender Identity Disorder based on watching a single YouTube video.
But that may not remain the case forever.
2. The scientific process is best when there is NO/minimal political interference, because when politicians insert themselves into the scientific process it becomes a very different thing.
-Lister had a lot of trouble being hired just because of his need to explain the empirical connection between conditions in a surgery and patient mortality.
-This has been the story in current times with Foolish Anthony Fauci.
-It has been the story during the initial stages of the HIV infection several decades ago, with the same Fool.
-It has been the story with the misunderstanding of macronutrients/ caloric restriction in weight loss as well as the relationship between fat and cholesterol, with Ancel Keys ("Big Fat Surprise" is the book that was written about this corruption.)
-It was something of a feature in this book, but the process has gone into overdrive in current times: when financial rewards come from producing results aligned with certain political goals, then it is an easy thing to get people that will generate the research that gives them funding. (Climate change.)
3. Medicine/Other Real Sciences are things that proceed by relentless trial and error. Popperian falsifiability (i.e. the fact that if you cannot falsify it, then it is not scientific) is something that has been known for probably about a century now.
But let's not forget how much work it took to get there, and let's not forget that only a very small fraction of the general population (and 0% of the political class) understands this very important concept.
But for this one concept, there would be no war against fossil fuels. (Speculation about climate change is really just conjecture.)
4. (p.132). Science proceeds one funeral at a time. A lot of people like to imagine that scientists are disinterested seekers of knowledge. This is emphatically not the case!
And that explains how the attacks against Joseph Lister turned personal..... He was stepping on the toes of people who already had their own a priori belief.
Lots of ego makes this process a lot slower than it would ordinarily be, and a lot of times you just have to wait out people's lifetime so that their ideas can die with them. (So that's why nobody believes in Freudian psychology anymore!)
Verdict:
Recommended at the second hand price. It's only a couple of hundred pages, and it's so easy to read and the fruit (of knowledge of this interesting period of time) hangs too low to not pluck it.
Nothing is learned, only remembered.......
New vocabulary:
anatomize
erysipelas
pyemia
animalcule
pythogenesis
"miasma"
tympanic
cerebritis
pultaceous
pernitrate
scirrhous (breasts)
cicatrised
bistoury
Regius Professor
baize
carious
putrescible
"The Butchering Art"
5/5 stars
"EXTREMELY gory, but a good story."
*******
Of the book:
-11 chapters
-235 pages of prose (21pps/chapter)
-≈4 hours of reading time; light and interesting
*******
This book talks about the experience of one man over his lifetime and career trying to make people aware that germs cause infection. And it is almost entirely in the context of the United Kingdom during the industrial Revolution.
There are many, many lessons in this book, and I recommend that it be read as a companion book to
1. "Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations" by Arnold vanDer Laar. (Surgical history.)
2. "Big Fat Surprise" Nina Teichholz. (Political corruption in the research process.)
3. "And the band played on," Randy Shilts. (Political incompetence in public policy/health.)
4. "Apocalypse Never," Michael Shellenberger. (Damage of research quality by political interference.)
It's an interesting property of human beings that: After problems are solved, it's very easy to forget that they ever existed in the first place. (The bad old days before antibiotics are probably not even a century behind us, and that was >99% of human history. And it seems to have been largely forgotten.)
It's an interesting property of human beings that: once old problems are solved, they will spontaneously generate new problems.
-Now that we have figured out about anesthesia/hormones / germs, we have to figure out whether or not it is the most ethical thing to give a teenager with other confounding mental problems a "sex change." This is a problem that nobody could have seen before when at least three quarters of patients would die because of gangrenous amputation.
-The conditions in industrial Revolution England were inconceivably bad, and London was an unspeakably FILTHY place. Now that those conditions are over and forgotten, the biggest problem that companies have is whether or not they have hired enough "Diversity Equity and Inclusion" consultants.
It really makes me wonder "What is the point of solving any problem?" because the next problem seems to me somehow inherent in the solution of the last.
*******
As hard as this is to believe: It was only 150 years ago that modern Germ Theory did not exist, and it was actually a matter of fierce dispute (!) whether or not germs were responsible for post-surgical infections.
And it took a LOT of work to get people to understand that; It was only some time after the US Civil War that it took hold in the United States.
Rather than synopsize the book, I think that there are a number of lessons that we learn from reading it that are useful in current times because they have resonances to so many old mistakes that are being repeated in current times.
1. Just because something is medical consensus as of a moment does not mean that it is true.
-For the events in this book, Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur were in the extreme minority in believing The Germ Theory of disease.
-Psychology is one of those "disciplines" where diseases vanish without a trace between one addition and the next of the DSM.
-As of this year, everybody and his brother is self diagnosing Gender Identity Disorder based on watching a single YouTube video.
But that may not remain the case forever.
2. The scientific process is best when there is NO/minimal political interference, because when politicians insert themselves into the scientific process it becomes a very different thing.
-Lister had a lot of trouble being hired just because of his need to explain the empirical connection between conditions in a surgery and patient mortality.
-This has been the story in current times with Foolish Anthony Fauci.
-It has been the story during the initial stages of the HIV infection several decades ago, with the same Fool.
-It has been the story with the misunderstanding of macronutrients/ caloric restriction in weight loss as well as the relationship between fat and cholesterol, with Ancel Keys ("Big Fat Surprise" is the book that was written about this corruption.)
-It was something of a feature in this book, but the process has gone into overdrive in current times: when financial rewards come from producing results aligned with certain political goals, then it is an easy thing to get people that will generate the research that gives them funding. (Climate change.)
3. Medicine/Other Real Sciences are things that proceed by relentless trial and error. Popperian falsifiability (i.e. the fact that if you cannot falsify it, then it is not scientific) is something that has been known for probably about a century now.
But let's not forget how much work it took to get there, and let's not forget that only a very small fraction of the general population (and 0% of the political class) understands this very important concept.
But for this one concept, there would be no war against fossil fuels. (Speculation about climate change is really just conjecture.)
4. (p.132). Science proceeds one funeral at a time. A lot of people like to imagine that scientists are disinterested seekers of knowledge. This is emphatically not the case!
And that explains how the attacks against Joseph Lister turned personal..... He was stepping on the toes of people who already had their own a priori belief.
Lots of ego makes this process a lot slower than it would ordinarily be, and a lot of times you just have to wait out people's lifetime so that their ideas can die with them. (So that's why nobody believes in Freudian psychology anymore!)
Verdict:
Recommended at the second hand price. It's only a couple of hundred pages, and it's so easy to read and the fruit (of knowledge of this interesting period of time) hangs too low to not pluck it.
Nothing is learned, only remembered.......
New vocabulary:
anatomize
erysipelas
pyemia
animalcule
pythogenesis
"miasma"
tympanic
cerebritis
pultaceous
pernitrate
scirrhous (breasts)
cicatrised
bistoury
Regius Professor
baize
carious
putrescible