February 15, 2009

Reviewed By Nadia Jajja
 

I wouldn’t tell you how good Blood and Guts: A history of surgery is. I would much rather let it speak for itself; my favourite passage among the many in this book is the ‘Night of the Pigs’, which takes place at the National Heart Hospital in London, 1969. Surgeon Donald Longmore is hoping to successfully graft a pig’s heart and lungs into a patient, who is all prepped and lying on the operating table.

As Longmore anxiously awaits the arrival of the pig to make history, the said animal has other ideas: he makes a run for his life. ‘Reluctant to make its own valuable contribution to medical progress, the pig had escaped. It is surprising how fast a pig can run, especially when its life is at stake. Still dressed in their operating theatre gowns, caps, mask and boots, the entire surgical team gave chase.

‘The pig ran as fast as its little legs could carry, but was no match for London’s finest heart surgeons, who eventually caught him halfway up the road. The pig squealed in protest but Longmore herded it back towards the hospital. It was five o’clock in the evening and people were heading home from work, so the street was relatively busy.

Most passers-by paid little attention to the odd group in the road. Only one gentleman seemed a little perturbed. Raising his bowler hat, he said ‘Excuse me, sir. You are going the wrong way along a one-way street.’

‘Arriving at the mortuary, Longmore had arranged for an anaesthetist to put the pig to sleep so that it could be killed and its organs removed. When the anaesthetist showed up, he turned out to be Jewish. He refused to kill the pig. Another anaesthetist was found… The heart and lungs were eventually removed from the pig, but now there was another problem: the patient was also Jewish… so rather than panic (or pray), Longmore did the next best thing — he rang a rabbi.

‘When Longmore explained what they were trying to do, the rabbi went quiet. The surgeon apologised for putting him in such a difficult position and understood if he didn’t want to get involved. There was another long, somewhat muffled silence. Finally the rabbi could hold back no longer. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was trying to stop laughing.’ Eventually, the rabbi reasoned that if it was a genuine attempt to save the life of a patient, there was no problem.

Clearly, if you have read so far and are sporting a grin there should be no doubt that Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery is an academic venture that has not been in vain. Published to accompany a five-part BBC television series of the same title, the work deftly logs the advances and evolution in the field surgery and impels one to consider medical history to be far more interesting than it is made out to be in popular culture.

 

The book casts away the perception that a venture on or about medicine needs to be complex and incomprehensible; its lexicon is simple and hence makes for an engaging read from cover to cover.

 

The book also casts away the perception that a venture on or about medicine needs to be complex and incomprehensible: its lexicon is simple and hence makes for an engaging read from cover to cover.

The book is divided into five chapters: the first one traces the inception and evolution of surgical methods, while the other four chapters detail the hot-button specialities of cardiac surgery, transplantation, cosmetic surgery and neurosurgery each.

While the author attempts to provide much valuable information, the disclaimer in the preface does explain that, ‘the book is a history of surgery rather than the history of surgery.’

What works most to its advantage is its fast pace, though the editing could have been slicker. And while it duly credits medical achievements, it doesn’t shy away from heaping criticism where ambition and personal gain took precedent over patients’ lives.

In between all this we discover that the first recorded plastic surgery was a nose reconstruction in 1500 BCE (yes nose bridges were an issue even then), that in 1903 Gladys Deacon had paraffin wax injection only to have her face melt (a surgery gone awfully awry for the social climber who was never heard from since), that it was in 1946 that the first female to male sex change operation was performed (a good 21 years before the first heart transplant), and that the infamous bacterium Listeria monocytogenes and Listerine mouthwash are named after Dr Lister, a pioneer in using antiseptic measures.

To catch more of such tidbits one would recommend getting a copy of the book. It’s a light read and certainly a keepsake.

 

Blood and guts: A history of surgery
By Richard Hollingham
Foreword by Michael Mosley
BBC Books, London
ISBN 978-1-84-607503-2
320pp. Rs1,595