Under the Knife

Tales of twenty-eight famous operations, from Louis XIV to Einstein, JFK, and Houdini, with "insight into the thought process and philosophy of those who cut to heal" ( Booklist). From the story of the desperate man from seventeenth-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley's deadly toe, Under the Knife offers a wealth of fascinating and unforgettable insights into medicine and history via the operating room. What happens during an operation? How does the human body respond to being attacked by a knife, a bacterium, a cancer cell, or a bullet? And, as medical advances continuously push the boundaries of what medicine can cure, what are the limits of surgery? Written by a surgeon who draws on his own expertise and experience, and filled with stories spanning the dark centuries of bloodletting and amputations without anesthetic through today's sterile, high-tech operating rooms, Under the Knife is both a rich cultural history and a modern anatomy class for us all. "Full of startling tales of slicing and stitching." — Wall Street Journal "History with a surgeon's touch: deft, incisive and sometimes excruciatingly bloody . . . fascinating." — The Sunday Times