The Butchering Art

And in a panic type A preparation, because I always like to be super prepared for everything, I remember rushing to a bookshop and furiously thinking I needed to read and finish the book before we did the podcast with her.

So that was kind of a trial by fire with the butchering art of Victorian surgery.

So one of my niche topic knowledge now, thanks to that particular episode.

Yes, The Butchering Art, Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grizzly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsay Fitzharris, which I still recommend everybody read.

It's a really, really good book.

And if you've just joined us and you're wondering what the hell is going on, I'm Natalie Tasker.

Bell is best known as the inspiration for Holmes, but there's far more to his story, and today we're going to hear all about it from best-selling author and medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris.

Her new book, Sleuth Hound, shines a light on the fascinating life of Joseph Bell.

As Lindsay reveals, Bell had more in common with the fictional detective than a razor-sharp eye and a relentlessly logical mind.

Like Holmes, Bell acted as a sort of consulting detective for Edinburgh police, offering invaluable insight as they investigated crimes.

But actually, immediately following the dawn of anesthesia, surgery gets more dangerous because the surgeon is more willing to pick up the knife.

He's more willing to go deeper into the body, but he doesn't understand germ theory yet.

And so in the 1860s, you get the dawn of germ theory with Joseph Lister, who was the focus of my first book, The Butchering Art.

And suddenly the hospitals get a bit cleaner and the surgeons start to clean up their act.

Erin and I have long been mega fans of Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris.

Her earlier books, The Butchering Art and The Facemaker, are some of our favorite works on the history of medicine.

And we are so very excited to share this conversation with you all.

So let's just take a quick break and get started.

And, you know, I spent a lot of years in the trenches of World War I.

It was really fun to go back to Edinburgh in the 19th century.

My first book, The Butchering Art, is about Joseph Lister, and he is a colleague of Joe Bell's.

So he's in this world as well, which is fascinating.

You have the birth of anesthesia, you have the birth of antisepsis, and he's up in Edinburgh.

He's operating, for instance, with Joseph Lister, Joseph Lister, the father of antisepsis, who is the subject of my first book, The Butchering Art, he applies germ theory to medical practice and he saves more lives than any other person to ever live.

Because if we can extrapolate knowing germs exist, I mean, the sky is the limit with surgery.

So Bell is very much a part of that medical world.

And so it's really until Joseph Lister comes along and comes with germ theory and convinces.

And by the way, it took a long time to convince surgeons to wash their hands and to clean up their act.

I know because it was, and people ask me about that all the time because of the butchering art.

And I say, well, you have to get into their mindset because if you don't understand germs, why would you wash your hands between patients? Because they're just going to get dirty again.

And so a lot of doctors didn't admit to failure at the time.

But I wrote a book called The Butchering Art, which is about Joseph Lister, who applies germ theory to medical practice and probably saves more lives than any other person to ever live, transforms surgery.

And he's unusual because he does admit when patients die in his care.

So you do start to get a bit of record keeping, but you don't really get hospital statistics until the end of the 19th century.

He has an assistant usher out of the room.

He asks his students, how did I know? Well, she had a superficial burn on her cheek and she had a cancerous sore on her lip, which you only get from a lifetime of smoking.

So he really, you know, unlike the butchering art, Bell doesn't create a single technique or a paradigm shift, but he does teach us a way of looking at the world, which then is passed on into this character of Sherlock Holmes.

and kind of lives on in crime scenes.

I'm Vas Christodoulou.

Lindsey Fitzharris is a public historian whose new book, Sleuth Hound, tells the true story of Jo Bell, the crime-solving Edinburgh surgeon who inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes.

I sat down with her last week to find out more.

Lindsay, we're here to talk about a legendary character from Victorian Britain.

I love that introduction and also how many people are going to be disappointed when I begin speaking with this Chicago accent that I've written this very British story about this British legend and I am an American.

I've been in the UK for 24 years and I just could never lose this Chicago accent but I do consider myself a British historian.

So who is the subject of your book Sleuth Hound and what's his real relationship to Sherlock Holmes?

So everybody thinks that Sherlock Holmes began at 221 B Baker Street, you know, with the hat, the pipe, the cocaine.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I've thought about this a lot because my first book about Joseph Lister, The Butchering Art, you know, that's very obvious.

You know, he smashes a paradigm.

We suddenly understand germ theory.

But I'm most excited about her amazing books.

She wrote The Butchering Art, about Victorian surgery, which I referenced a million times during our episode about the history of anesthesia.

She also wrote The Facemaker, about the origins of cosmetic surgery to improve the lives of soldiers that were disfigured during World War II.

And today, we're talking about her most recent book, Sleuth Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes.

Oh my gosh.

Preach, Daniel.

I mean, honestly, and this is such an interesting point because with my first book, The Butchering Art, which was about the father of antiseptic surgery, Joseph Lister, it's interesting, at the end of his life, he actually asked that his personal correspondence, anything that didn't have to do with his science and his discoveries, be destroyed.

Hmm.