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A Surgeon With 300% Mortality Rate From a Single Operation and Other Historic Screwups

Khalid Elhassan October 11, 2020 32 min

Robert Liston - Surgery — Dr. Robert Liston operating. Wellcome Images

34. “The Fastest Knife in the West End“

Dr. Liston and old-timey surgery. Daily Mail

Dr. Robert Liston was a surgeon known for his speed. In the days before anesthetics, an ability to operate speedily was a decided plus. It meant that patients spent less time enduring excruciating pain as a surgeon cut into them. It also increased the odds of survival, lessening the odds of patients going into shock, as well as reducing the time in which their vitals were exposed to germs and other vectors of infection.

Dr. Liston was famous for being able to complete operations in a matter of seconds, and amputate a leg in just two and a half minutes. Unsurprisingly, chances for a mistake were pretty high.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.