Dr. Robert Liston
As medicine began to advance into the modern era, people began to rely less on ideas of demonic possession and exorcism and more on scientific analysis. At the same time, given the public’s fascination with science and public displays of scientific experiments, surgery was becoming a bit of a theatrical affair. People could actually watch operations, often for their own entertainment. Today, typically only medical students view surgeries, and this practice is strictly regulated under privacy laws. However, in a day before privacy laws, and before anesthesia, watching medical procedures be performed was a bit of a past time for people (perhaps that’s why we refer to the “operating theatre”).
Imagine that you severely burned your arm in a cooking accident. The wound was carefully attended to, but it became infected before finally developing gangrene and becoming necrotic. The physician recommends that the arm should be amputated as soon as possible (read: immediately), to keep the infection and necrosis from spreading. You are brought to the operating room of Dr. Robert Liston after waiting in line behind dozens of other patients who are in need of amputation. You cradle your arm, knowing that you will have to undergo this life-altering surgery that could save your life but may also end it. Worse yet, you will have to endure it without any anesthesia.
George Eastman Museum/Wikimedia.
Your turn arrives for the operating theater. “Time me!” the doctor flamboyantly tells his assistant. He takes out his surgical instruments and ties a tourniquet near your elbow to reduce the blood flow to the spot where he will amputate. He then begins sawing at your arm, with both speed and bravado, to the applause of onlookers. To save time, when he switches surgical instruments, he holds the knife in his mouth, then begins suturing your arm. Within two and a half minutes, the entire procedure is complete. Your severed arm is thrown into a wastebasket, and you, delirious with pain, can begin your recovery.
In the nineteenth century, Dr. Robert Liston was a Scottish surgeon who was revered as one of the best in all of Britain. Seeing as his career was during a period before antibiotics or anesthesia, speed was entirely of the essence in both reducing the patient’s agonizing pain and the threat of infection. He practiced in Edinburgh and was known to have the fastest knife in the entire West End. His record for limb amputation was all of 28 seconds. He was known to be able to amputate a person’s leg and suture the wound in under three minutes.
Other surgeons of the time did not regard Liston too highly. He had a reputation for being abrupt, abrasive, and argumentative. At the same time, he extended charity to the poor by performing surgeries for those who were unable to afford the procedure. People would line up at his office in order to have him perform their amputations, knowing that under him, they had the best chance for survival. He would see to all of them. Despite his charity, he made a fortune in his medical practice.