Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common”.- John Locke

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris

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You have to love a book that starts with a (possibly apocryphal) story of an operation with a 300% mortality rate and ends with the invention of Listerine and the founding of Johnson & Johnson. This biography/medical history tells the life story of Dr. Joseph Lister, pioneer of antiseptic surgery and preventive healthcare, considered the “father of modern surgery”. Building off of Louis Pasteur’s then-novel germ theory of fermentation, Lister was one of the first doctors to start sterilizing operating theaters and surgical instruments before […]

Diseases shape the course of history

Plague-Busters!: Medicine's Battles with History's Deadliest Diseases by  Lindsey Fitzharris

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Plague-Busters!: Medicine’s Battles with History’s Deadliest Diseases by Lindsey Fitzharris and Adrian Teal is probably my new favorite nonfiction read of 2023 (I know it is still only late April, but something tells me I won’t be reading too many more nonfictions and if I do, nothing will match up to this).  Due in October 2023, I give this book a 4.5 as I need to see the final artwork. What I had in my reader copy, was mostly black and white, but there were a […]

Surgery Before Anesthesia and Antiseptics

The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris

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Bingo 17 (Science!) The Butchering Art is part biography and part history of medicine, but mostly medicine. Do not read this is you are squeamish about some fairly graphic descriptions of surgery before things like antiseptics and anesthesia. The focus of the book is one the career of a Quaker named Joseph Lister in Victorian England; if his last name sounds vaguely familiar it should, and I’m surprised it doesn’t get more attention or pointed out sooner than it actually does. I’m also slightly ashamed […]



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