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Reviews tagging 'Animal death'
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris
7 reviews
ceredonia's review against another edition
2.0
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Drug use, Gore, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail
beepbeep101's review against another edition
5.0
Her writing reads, if not like fiction, as smoothly as a novel in most places. I grew up hearing medical terms around the dinner table, as my dad is a family physician, so I may have a head start on other readers - but there were few times that I had to stop to re-read a section or look up a term. Fitzharris defines concepts well for the layman. Most of the times I had to re-read anything were quotes using antiquated jargon.
I remember learning about pasteurization in school, and I, as many today, take for granted all of the antiseptic steps we go through today with even just treating scrapes. But learning about the process we went through to get there and about the lives of these individuals brings so much more perspective! I knew roughly the timeline for transitioning from miasma to germ theory, but reading in more detail about how we figured it out and the reactions of the medical community is fascinating and just….awe-inspiring.
Graphic: Death, Gore, Blood, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Child death, Terminal illness, Excrement, Vomit, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Classism
sfenstermacher's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Medical content
abbycole's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, and Death of parent
katchadder's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Gore, Blood, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Physical abuse
sirianoe's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Death, Gore, Blood, and Medical content
Moderate: Animal death
hanarama's review against another edition
4.0
Fitzharris provides a lot of historical insight into Victorian medical practices, highlighting how gruesome and ineffectual they often were before germ theory was fully accepted and understood. She presents the narrative in an interesting and easy to follow manner, giving the reader enough background to understand Lister's impact without bogging down the biographical aspects.
I wonder if there was some information left out of the narrative though. It's well known now that racial minorities and women were often treated with experimental procedures against their will. The book doesn't make it clear if Lister also did this, though he was known to have better bedside manner and empathy towards his patients for the time. I would have liked for this topic to have been explored more so that we could see how Lister fit into this terrible aspect of medical history.
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Medical content, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Animal death, Cancer, and Blood