Recorded at Chalke Valley History Festival 2018.

Surgeons are the miracle-workers of the 21st century – but it was not always so. In this talk, medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris recreates the grisly hell of 19th-century surgery to tell the story of the pioneering surgeon Joseph Lister, who transformed his brutal, harrowing practice into the safe, vaunted profession we know today, thereby saving hundreds of millions of lives in the generations to come.