Robert Liston (1794-1847) was a Scottish surgeon who is most famous for amputating a patients


Robert Liston (1794-1847) was a Scottish surgeon who is most famous for amputating a patient's leg in under 2.5 minutes, operating so quickly that in the process also amputated the fingers of his assistant and slashed the coat tails of a spectator, who dropped dead from sheer terror. Both the patient and his assistant later died from gangrene, making it the only recorded operation with a 300% mortality rate.⁣⁣⁣
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British surgeon and author Richard Gordon described Liston as the following:⁣⁣⁣
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"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-railinged 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."⁣⁣⁣
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Gordon's book, "Great Medical Disasters" (1983), lists some of Liston's other surgical procedures: ⁣⁣⁣
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"Removal in 4 minutes of a 45-pound scrotal tumour, whose owner had to carry it round in a wheelbarrow."⁣⁣⁣
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"Amputated the leg in 21⁄2 minutes, but in his enthusiasm the patient's testicles as well."⁣
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"Argument with his house-surgeon. Was the red, pulsating tumour in a small boy's neck a straightforward abscess of the skin, or a dangerous aneurism of the carotid artery? 'Pooh!' Liston exclaimed impatiently. 'Whoever heard of an aneurism in one so young?' Flashing a knife from his waistcoat pocket, he lanced it. Houseman's note – 'Out leaped arterial blood, and the boy fell.' The patient died but the artery lives, in University College Hospital pathology museum, specimen No. 1256."⁣⁣⁣
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⁣Source: "Robert Liston Operating" by Ernest Board of Bristol (1877-1934), and this was one of the paintings he was commissioned to paint by Henry S. Wellcome circa 1912.

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