Under the Knife
A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations
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Narrated by:
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Rich Keeble
About this listen
Surgeon Arnold van de Laar uses his own experience and expertise to tell this engrossing history of surgery through 28 famous operations - from Louis XIV and Einstein to JFK and Houdini.
From the story of the desperate man from 17th-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?
With stories spanning the dark centuries of bloodletting and amputations without anaesthetic 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.
©2018 2018 text copyright Arnold van de Laar; 2018 translation copyright Andy Brown (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
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Extreme Medicine
- How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century
- By: Kevin Fong
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Little more than 100 years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world's environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the 20th century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was routinely fatal and made it survivable. As modernity brought us ever more into different kinds of extremes, doctors pushed the bounds of medical advances and human endurance. Extreme exploration challenged the body in ways that only the vanguard of science could answer.
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EXTREME MEDICINE
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 07-25-14
By: Kevin Fong
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The Great War and the Birth of Modern Medicine
- A History
- By: Thomas Helling MD
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Great War of 1914-1918 burst on the European scene with a brutality to mankind not yet witnessed by the civilized world. Modern warfare was no longer the stuff of chivalry and honor; it was a mutilative, deadly, and humbling exercise to wipe out the very presence of humanity. Suddenly, thousands upon thousands of maimed, beaten, and bleeding men surged into aid stations and hospitals with injuries unimaginable in their scope and destruction. Doctors scrambled to find some way to salvage not only life but limb.
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Interesting but weirdly sexist?
- By J-Murphy on 07-19-22
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Birth Day
- A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and the Wonder of Childbirth
- By: Mark Sloan MD
- Narrated by: Mark Sloan MD
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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"I delivered twenty babies in the summer of 1977. I was hardly more than a baby myself, just turned 24 and starting my third year of medical school." So began Mark Sloan's three-decades-long exploration of the wonders and oddities of human childbirth. Pediatrician, husband, and father, the author has attended nearly 3000 births since that long-ago summer, encountering everything from routine deliveries to tense labor-room dramas.
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Great Book - Heavy on the History
- By Robert Ingalls on 03-16-17
By: Mark Sloan MD
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The Undead
- Organ Harvesting, The Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers - How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death
- By: Dick Teresi
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Important and provocative, The Undead examines why even with the tools of advanced technology, what we think of as life and death, consciousness and nonconsciousness, is not exactly clear - and how this problem has been further complicated by the business of organ harvesting.
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Eye opening
- By Amy Giglio on 07-01-18
By: Dick Teresi
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Confessions of a Surgeon
- The Good, the Bad, and the Complicated...Life Behind the O.R. Doors
- By: Paul A. Ruggieri MD
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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As an active surgeon and former department chairman, Dr. Paul A. Ruggieri has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of his profession. In Confessions of a Surgeon, he pushes open the doors of the OR and reveals the inscrutable place where lives are improved, saved, and sometimes lost. He shares the successes, failures, remarkable advances, and camaraderie that make it exciting.
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Enjoyed the anecdotes!
- By suzanne on 07-31-17
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Birth
- The Surprising History of How We Are Born
- By: Tina Cassidy
- Narrated by: Angela Starling
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From evolution to the epidural and beyond, Tina Cassidy presents an intelligent, enlightening, and impeccably researched cultural history of how and why we're born the way we are. Women have been giving birth for millennia, but that's about the only constant in the final stage of the great process that is human reproduction. Why is it that every culture and generation seems to have its own ideas about the best way to give birth?
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important historical work, fascinating and fun
- By RT on 02-24-16
By: Tina Cassidy
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Healing Hearts
- A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
- By: Kathy Magliato
- Narrated by: Renée Raudman
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of fewer than a dozen female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group - those surgeons who perform heart transplants. Healing Hearts is the story of the making of a surgeon who also calls herself a wife and mother.
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Healing Hearts
- By Jean on 01-14-12
By: Kathy Magliato
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The Moth in the Iron Lung
- A Biography of Polio
- By: Forrest Maready
- Narrated by: Forrest Maready
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere. Doctors, parents, and health officials were at a loss to explain why this formerly unheard-of disease began paralyzing so many children. Why did this disease start to become such a horrible problem during the late 1800s? Why did it affect children more often than adults? Why was it originally called teething paralysis by mothers and their doctors?
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Root Cause
- By Circlekay1 Gulfport MS on 10-24-19
By: Forrest Maready
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Less Medicine, More Health
- 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care
- By: H. Gilbert Welch
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of the highly acclaimed Overdiagnosed describes seven widespread assumptions that encourage excessive, often ineffective, and sometimes harmful medical care. You might think the biggest problem in medical care is that it costs too much. Or that health insurance is too expensive, too uneven, too complicated - and gives you too many forms to fill out. But the central problem is that too much medical care has too little value.
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The truth will set you free
- By Rene B Milner on 04-01-16
By: H. Gilbert Welch
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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Medical history comes to life
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I love this book!
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The Facemaker
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From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies.
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My favorite author
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Yup, this is the one you’re looking for...
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EXCELLENT FROM START TO FINISH.
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Today, astonishing surgical breakthroughs are making limb transplants, face transplants, and a host of other previously undreamed-of operations possible. But getting here has not been a simple story of medical progress. In Blood and Guts, veteran science writer Richard Hollingham weaves a compelling narrative from the key moments in surgical history. We have a ringside seat in the operating theater of University College Hospital in London as world-renowned Victorian surgeon Robert Liston performs a remarkable amputation in 30 seconds - from first cut to final stitch.
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Morbidly wonderful
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de Waal weighs in on nature & environment inputs
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Under the Knife
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What listeners say about Under the Knife
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-09-23
Great Listen
Very interesting from start to finish. The timeline of surgical developments was not what I would have expected. Some procedures developed much earlier than I thought. I can’t imagine what surgery was like for the patient when one of the doctor’s greatest talents was speed!
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- Fact addict
- 07-19-19
Superb-Oh!!
I love history, and having been involved in medical care of one type or another since the late 60’s, and a history nut besides, I LOVED this WONDERFUL book!!
Each vignette gives an insight into a new theory, or development, or happy accident, that advanced the theory and/or practice of medical care throughout history. Starting with BCE and moving all the way through to organ transplantation, there is well-narrated event after event, and term after term.
The two narrators are quite different, and each is well equipped to tell his side of the story.
The book is evidently written in Dutch, and the narrators are British, so some of the terms are pronounced differently from our US pronunciation. At first it was slightly jarring but soon settled into a comfortable rhythm. Many Americans don’t realize that although we in the US call both doctors and surgeons ‘Doctor,’ in the UK docs are called ‘Doctor,’ and surgeons are addressed as simply,
‘Mister.’ Sounds odd to us, I know.
Another slight difference is that as I understand it, nurses are nurses, but the frequently used,
‘Sister,’ is used for nursing supervisors or advanced practice nurses. ( That may be an error on my part, but my explainer was rushed and we had to cut the call— sorry if wrong: my error.)
If you enjoy history, medicine, or especially the combo: This is THE book for you!
** And remember: NO antibiotics, NO anesthesia ( not even local!), NO electricity, which meant sunlight or candle power, NO ambient
heating/cooling in any room, NO sterility— in fact mist of this history there was not even soap involved!! **
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- Brian H.
- 04-19-20
Just What The Doctor Ordered
Nicely written and elaborated in an unexpected way, “Knife” provides an excellent slice of surgical history. Narration is spot-on.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Judy
- 09-02-19
Aren't You Glad You Didn't Live THEN?
This is a mostly gripping description of medical life before anaesthesia, modern imaging techniques, and sterile operating fields. Shoot, back then, mainstream medical practitioners didn't even believe in the importance of washing up before surgery. Joseph Lister's insistence on the presence of dangerous microbes was ridiculed by germ-deniers because germs are invisible to the naked eye. Kind of like denying the law of gravity, non?
The author presents a comprehensive layman's guide to healthcare as the medical/pharmaceutical complex of the time struggled with superstition and sheer folly en route to the establishment of modern protocols of healthcare.
Keeble's narration is pleasant and well-modulated.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Patricia Ferrer
- 11-04-18
candy for hx med buffs
historical stories of surgical tales of trial and error that eventually lead to lessons and improvements yielding better and safer surgical outcomes we enjoy today....thank goodness!!! well told: reader's voice fits perfectly with this subject.
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- Sheila Bryan
- 05-21-24
Great new information I wasn't aware of
I liked the historical aspect of these 28 procedures, as horrifying as some of then were. Kudos to the addition at the end to include female doctors and suegeons.
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- India Clamp
- 10-18-18
Why did a surgeon need a fast horse?
Books flood my box, they arrive in electronic, online formats and traditional (hardback/paperback) forms. The majority are written by surgeons on the verge of retirement and others from surgeons---like Gawande---at the height of their careers offering a clear, frank and “in your face” experience of the quotidian surgical struggles faced. It is a thoroughly engaging prefatory journey. Through personal experience (20 years) I find most surgeons are not only skilled with a knife but with words, direction and such is conveyed in neon-colored delineation painting vibrant verbal pictures not easily forgotten.
Under The Knife is a non-fiction book by surgeon Arnold Van De Laar, my version was translated from Dutch and narrated by a non-Dutch/non-surgeon named Rich Keeble. Under The Knife, cranks out some famous accounts of surgery and is ‘the history of surgery in 28 remarkable operations’. Dirty origins from “Lithotomy Surgeons” to the surgical mavens using precision via technological advancements we are fortunate to have today. The book is a true voyage through human body, opening up wide the ways (in the surgical theatre) things go terribly awry and what genius is called/paged/texted to solve issue or end it.
If gore is not for you, pus or sayings in Latin are vulgar things, then do not read this. Nasty, nefarious and pus-filled adventures are told in a ‘macabre’ trudge down the path and the read feels like getting the wind knocked out of you. This review is my latest in surgical streak and truth shines rather brightly in the gutter. Starts out with a frustrated Dutch man (who performs surgery on himself in 1651). Author is a surgeon in Amsterdam which means most deliciously that he imparts the details in a raw, clinical and straight forward manner on a most intelligent and fluid conveyance using tools like words, phrases in Latin, photos and intonation in non-monosyllabic way lacking idiocrasy.
Organization is commendable, and first case is our President (John F. Kennedy) another is George Washington (as we know, they both die) yet the details give us a clear surgical picture of what happened before clinical death. Cases from bullet wounds to fractures and gangrene, to obesity and anal fistula’s; the gamete of common surgeries is thoroughly covered. Under the Knife (is nakedly honest) imparts “technicolor” surgical lessons and most will find the surgeons descriptiveness unappealing and garish yet it’s told with clinical accuracy and becomes a colorful artistic masterpiece---as if Van Gogh was involved. Buy it, brilliant read, listen and visuals.
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18 people found this helpful
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- JoCOL
- 09-13-20
Fascinating walk through history & surgery
NOT what we expected (a chronological take on the subject) but terrific just the same. My husband, a former OR tech in the Air Force, loves it. We both found the science and history very interesting. Highly recommend.
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- JustBill
- 07-14-20
A Great Listening Experience
What a surprisingly good book this was, and right where I like them, "Not too Gross." As a lover of nonfiction, this felt that need, although I could have chosen a better commentator, but in that area, I would give it a B-. I found in it, that medicine could be 200 years ahead of itself today, only if the older generation of physicians just accepted change, and everyone that prays, please take some time to pray, for the victims of medicines throughout the ages, as it reminds me of Popes that took whole Gospels out of the Bible just because they could.
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- Lydell Lettsome
- 10-08-19
If you like surgery on TV
I’m a real life surgeon. All the time friends, family & strangers often want to know what being a surgeon is like. This book will tell you a lot about surgery, being a surgeon & even world history.
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6 people found this helpful