Naar From Hell aan het kijken. Ik weet niet wat ik zou doen als ik geen internet meer had. Er wordt ergens gewag gemaakt van een “Liston knife”. Google derop, en hopla:
Dr. Robert Liston (1794-1847) was a very prominent surgeon in the 19th century and invented a number of surgical techniques used today. In fact, many of the instruments in his surgical sets were named after him. Dr. Liston was a large man who cut a broad figure in the operating room and was proud of his reputation as a fast surgeon, a reputation that was well respected in this preanesthetic era for obvious reasons. Legends of his operating techniques are numerous, including the carved notches Dr. Liston made on his amputation knife following each procedure. […]
Liston’s fourth most famous case:
Removal in four minutes of a 45-pound scrotal tumour, whose owner had to carry it around in a wheelbarrow.Liston’s third most famous case:
Argument with his intern. 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 a boy so young?”. Flashing a knife from his waistcoat pocket, he lanced it.
Intern’s note: “Out leaped arterial blood and the boy fell.”
The patient died but the artery lives, in the University College Hospital pathology museum specimen No. 1256.Liston’s second most famous case:
Amputated the leg in two and a half minutes, but in his enthusiasm the patient’s testicles as well.Liston’s most famous case:
Amputated the leg in under two and a half minutes – the patient died afterwards in the ward from hospital gangrene (they often did in those early days).
He amputated in addition, the fingers of his young assistant who too died afterward in the ward from hospital gangrene.
Liston also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals that he dropped dead from fright.
Thus ended the only operation in history with a 300 percent mortality !”
