A slice of medical horror lurking in my library book writes Steve Canavan

Scotland has a lot to be proud of. Andy Murray, Irn Bru, those funny skirts men wear.
OperationOperation
Operation

But I don’t know why they don’t make more of Robert Liston.

‘Who?’ I hear you cry.

Well shame on you because Liston is a legend and without doubt one of the most interesting (or, depending on your viewpoint, bonkers) doctors of all time.

I stumbled across him while reading a passage in a book about medicine the other day (as an aside, when I got the book out at the library the woman behind the counter stared interestingly at the front cover and asked if I was a doctor. I replied I wasn’t. Are you in the medical profession, she further enquired? I again replied in the negative. There was then an awkward pause as she tried, and clearly failed, to understand why a man without any medical background would want to read a book about medicine. She then looked at me with a degree of nervousness and, with slight reluctance I felt, let me have the book).

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Anyway, medical background or not I’m pleased to report that it’s fascinating and full of little stories about those throughout the history of medicine who have made some sort of mark, whether good or bad.

Liston is a strange one because he is both revered and yet made some of the most horrific mistakes imaginable.

Born in a tiny village in Scotland in 1794, he studied medicine, excelled, and by the age of 24 had become a surgeon at an Edinburgh hospital.

In an era before anaesthetic and cleanliness and hygiene, Liston realised performing surgery quickly was key in terms of survival and, boy, did he set about making sure he was quick.

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Known by the nickname ‘the fastest knife in the West End’, his speciality was amputation and his greatest boast was that he could take someone’s leg off in two-and-a-half minutes – quicker than the advertising break during Coronation Street and 154 times quicker than getting a tank-full of petrol.

Before each operation he would turn to the gathered crowd – for he was so famous for his speed other surgeons and interested parties would come to watch – and shout, ‘time me gentleman, time me’ … which I imagine can’t have been particularly reassuring for the person lay on the bed awaiting the removal of a limb. I mean call me over-cautious but I’ve always been a fan of a doctor taking care and time over surgery to make sure they get it right, not just lopping something off as quickly as possible so they can get an early dart from work.

He was generally fairly successful and saved many lives, but there were some famous mishaps, my favourite of which came when he performed one of his leg amputations on a male patient.

He was doing the procedure so quickly that as his knife cut clean through the leg and came out the other side, it also cut off the fingers of his surgical assistant and then, while switching instruments, he managed to slash a spectator’s coat. The bloke he was operating on and the assistant both died from infections of their wounds, while the spectator was so convinced he had been stabbed that he died of shock too. The whole episode took just 28 seconds and to this day is the only known surgery in the history of medicine with a 300 per cent mortality rate.

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Liston also, famously, accidentally sliced off a patient’s testicles while removing a leg, which must have been a difficult conversation to have when the patient came round (‘Well Mr Jones, there’s good news and bad. The positive is we’ve taken the leg off and it seems to be healing nicely. On the downside, and just out of interest, did you have any ambitions to become a father?’)

According to descriptions from the time, Liston was “abrupt, abrasive, and argumentative” – much like Mrs Canavan when I’ve not done the washing up – but “unfailing charitable to the poor and tender to the sick, while vilely unpopular to his fellow surgeons”.

An author of the day – Richard Gordon, who witnessed several of Liston’s operations – wrote: ‘He was six foot two, and operated in a bottle-green coat with wellington boots. He sprung across the blood-stained boards upon his swooning, sweating, strapped-down patient like a duelist, calling, ‘Time me gentlemen, time me!’ to students craning with pocket watches from the iron-railed galleries. Everyone swore that the first flash of his knife was followed so swiftly by the rasp of saw on bone that sight and sound seemed simultaneous. To free both hands, he would clasp the bloody knife between his teeth.’

Which let’s be honest, must have been a darn sight more fascinating than Britain’s Got Talent to watch.

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And despite his shortcomings – ie, that he sometimes got it wrong and removed the odd reproductive organ – Liston is actually held in high regard and responsible for a number of improvements in the medical system, such as realising the importance of clean hospitals and inventing see-through plasters, a type of forceps and a leg-splint to stabilise fractures that is still used today.

Right, enough waffle – I’m off to the library to further baffle the woman who works there by getting out another weird book.

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