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