Der Horror der frühen Medizin

From the bestselling author of The Butchering Art and The Facemaker comes the astonishing true story of Joseph Bell, the Scottish surgeon whose extraordinary talent for detection inspired Sherlock HolmesEdinburgh, 1878. A medical student squeezes into the Royal Infirmary's packed operating theatre, eager to catch a glimpse of his celebrated professor-a man whose uncanny powers of observation blur the line between diagnosis and detective work.That man was Joseph Bell. With a flair for the theatrical and an eye for clues hidden in the tiniest details, Bell astonished his students with lightning-fast deductions about his patients' lives. Though he considered his methods to be quite 'elementary', they captured the imagination of his audience - including his prized student, a young Arthur Conan Doyle, who would eventually abandon his medical career in order to create the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.In Sleuth-hound, award-winning historian Lindsey Fitzharris guides us through the smog-choked alleys and crowded slums of Victorian Edinburgh to recount the untold story of the man who inspired literature's most iconic sleuth. Bell's talent was so formidable that he was called upon to investigate criminal cases and, alongside Edinburgh's chief police surgeon, worked on some of the highest profile murders of the century, including Jack the Ripper. Together, the two men pioneered a new era of forensic science to crack crimes. By scrutinizing a scratch on a desk, a trace of cigar ash, or the slightest peculiarity of a man's gait, Bell could turn the smallest clues into revelations. The result, as Sleuth-Hound grippingly shows, changed medicine, literature - and detection - forever.

DAILY MAIL, GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017<BR><BR>Winner of the 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing<BR>Shortlisted for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize<BR>Shortlisted for the 2018 Wolfson Prize<BR><BR>The story of a visionary British surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world - the safest time to be alive in human history<BR><BR>In The Butchering Art, historian Lindsey Fitzharris recreates a critical turning point in the history of medicine, when Joseph Lister transformed surgery from a brutal, harrowing practice to the safe, vaunted profession we know today. <BR><BR>Victorian operating theatres were known as 'gateways of death', Fitzharris reminds us, since half of those who underwent surgery didn't survive the experience. This was an era when a broken leg could lead to amputation, when surgeons often lacked university degrees, and were still known to ransack cemeteries to find cadavers. While the discovery of anaesthesia somewhat lessened the misery for patients, ironically it led to more deaths, as surgeons took greater risks. In squalid, overcrowded hospitals, doctors remained baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. <BR><BR>At a time when surgery couldn't have been more dangerous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: Joseph Lister, a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon. By making the audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection - and could be treated with antiseptics - he changed the history of medicine forever. <BR><BR>With a novelist's eye for detail, Fitzharris brilliantly conjures up the grisly world of Victorian surgery, revealing how one of Britain's greatest medical minds finally brought centuries of savagery, sawing and gangrene to an end.

Als Harold Gillies die Verheerungen des Ersten Weltkriegs mit eigenen Augen sieht, ist er schockiert. Zu viele junge Männer werden nach nur einem falschen Augenblick ihrem Schicksal überlassen: für immer entstellt, für immer Monster in den Augen der Gesellschaft. Nach seiner Rückkehr ins Königreich setzt der junge Arzt alles daran, einen Weg zu finden, um das Leiden zu verringern. Mit stetem Einsatz, vielen Verbündeten und unkonventionellen Methoden baut er die erste 'Schönheitsklinik' der Welt auf und kämpft fortan gegen das Stigma einer Generation. Sein Leben wird zum Gründungsakt einer Disziplin, die unsere Gegenwart unmissverständlich prägt.Für die, die schön sein wollen, mussten andere leiden. Denn die Operationen der Schönheitschirurgie - Rhinoplastik, Lidstraffung, Fettabsaugung - haben ihren grausigen Ursprung im Ersten Weltkrieg. Im Schlamm der Schützengräben verlor eine ganze Generation das Gesicht, bis ein furchtloser Arzt den Grundstein legte für eine neue, revolutionäre Disziplin ... Lindsey Fitzharris erzählt packend und erkenntnisreich vom Leben dieses Mannes und dem Wert der menschlichen Züge.