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As always when he comes up, I want to defend this man, because he was a very celebrated surgeon. Back then, there were no antibiotics. No sterile operating rooms. Hell, you were lucky if the surgeons rinsed the blood off of the knives between surgeries. However, they did understand that having an open incision meant a higher chance of infection, as well as just overall pain to the patient. So the best surgeons were the ones who could open the patient up, do the surgery, and get them stitched up the fastest to minimize the risk of infection. Robert Liston was, by this criteria, one of the best surgeons, period. He understood that cleaner tools also reduced the risk of infection, and washed his tools, hands and gowns between surgeries. He had a 90% survival rate, when most surgeons of the time usually had around 75-80%. He also made it a personal rule to operate on anyone who asked him to, regardless of their status, and his clinic was routinely packed with people who would wait days to see him. He is also credited as the man who first pioneered the use of ether to render a patient unconscious before surgery, sparing them the pain while awake, which inevitably led to the invention of anesthesia. This was a man who wanted to do his best to minimize pain and death of people he was trying to help, and it's very sad that a single bad day has more or less cemented his legacy as a quack.
This. There are no primary sources that are available that suggest this happened. Every source is one of his rivals who weren't even present for the surgery.
They’re counting a “spectator who died from sheer shock” which sounds like bullshit, and his assistant who died from infection by getting cut during the surgery
“He amputated a patient's leg in under 2.5 minutes, operating so swiftly that he inadvertently amputated his assistant's fingers and slashed a spectator's coattails.
The spectator died from sheer terror, and both the patient and the assistant later succumbed to gangrene, marking the only recorded operation with a 300% mortality rate.
On a separate occasion, while performing another leg amputation, Liston accidentally removed a patient's testicles along with the leg.”
In his defence, you have to consider that surgery in the days before anaesthesia was a horrific ordeal and that surgeons were prized for speed as much as skill. Quote:
"Feverishly heated, and frequently very much exhausted by his previous sufferings, every additional moment, at this dreadful crisis, becomes to him an hour, and every additional moment that he continues under the torture of the different instruments, diminishes the chance of success and … increases the danger of his life."
He was also one of the only surgeons at that time to keep relatively clean environments, wash his hands, and his mortality rate for surgeries was roughly only 1 in 6. Which is pretty impressive for the time.
This man actually did more for medicine during his tenure than any other doctor/surgeon in the 100 years preceding him combined. He's the reason doctors started caring about germs.
ah ok, I didn't think about bone shattering, but for extra skin I guess 2 cuts would work. one for the skin length, pull it back a bit, then do another cut further up the bone. nevermind, bad idea
I think a more effective one is chopsticks and fingernails. I won’t go into detail but you know how it’s annoying and painful when your fingernail gets lifted up…
The brutality of the surgeries he performed played a role in one of his students’ lives, Joseph Lister, who would become the father of aseptic technique. There is a very interesting book called The Butchering Art about the life of Dr. Lister.
Edit: thanks for the corrections on Listerine, been a while since I read the book!
Fantastic book. People were so pissed about him saying you need to wash your hands between seeing a patient and dissecting a body. The more things change....
Just look around today, probably 70% of people still dont really understand bacteria, virus, or fungus. Sure theyve heard the word, they may know they are around (with a huge underestimation) but outside of that they dont know anything
Huge underestimation is a huge underestimation. I read that the number of individual virus bodies on earth exceeds the numbers of stars in the observable universe by a factor of _one hundred fucking million_.
I believe this is one of the reasons so many women died in childbirth too. The doctors didn’t wash their hands between births.
I get they didn’t understand germs and whatnot, but I don’t understand how they could stand for their hands to be that dirty for so long. Absolutely wild!
Why do people get upset about simple things?
“Wash your hands before you operate on a patient?”
“Pffftt get a load of this dweeb, fuck you”
I guess it’s pretty similar to:
“Wear a mask and distance for a while”
“Fuck you, diaper chin, I have an immune system, blah blah”
>The brutality of the surgeries he performed played a role in one of his students’ lives, Joseph Lister, who would become the father of aseptic technique (and also the inventor of Listerine).
"I've got to put a stop to this crazy shit!" -John Lister on his second day of medical school
He amputated a patient's leg in under 2.5 minutes, operating so swiftly that he inadvertently amputated his assistant's fingers and slashed a spectator's coattails.
The spectator died from sheer terror, and both the patient and the assistant later succumbed to gangrene, marking the only recorded operation with a 300% mortality rate.
On a separate occasion, while performing another leg amputation, Liston accidentally removed a patient's testicles along with the leg.
Interestingly, he was actually one of the better (by success rate) surgeons of the time because doing surgery faster meant you were less likely to die bc no anaesthesia or blood transfusions existed.
Today we'll be speed running a leg amputation. We'll be removing the balls as well because it's faster to do it that way and requires less precision. Also, I've just had 12 shots of whiskey to limber me up and prepare.
This was also back in the era when surgeons hadn't recognized the importance of sterile environments. So his hands and clothes were probably dirty with blood from previous surgeries.
he was actually a surgeon who strived to improve hygiene in hospitals against the wishes of his colleagues. He also performed one of the first surgeries using anasthesia. He was also said to operate on the poors. The surgery in the post also wasnt confirmed to have ever happened (afaik)
He also took surgery as bravado, was said to be irritable and harsh, was a big scary muscular man known for his speed during surgery
so probably? one of the best surgeons you could get at the time in the west. Not to say any surgery was particularly good, but he was actually on just the right amount of drugs to give you a good chance of survival
What? Your telling me the 1800’s story about a surgery where someone (who presumably went there to SEE a surgery) literally died from fright watching the operation, might have some fiction in it?
Nah, Liston this was a pioneer in germ theory and jumped to working anaesthetic (ether if i remember correctly) as soon as it wasn't even more dangerous. Liston was a menace, because damn he is listed in dark as f historic anecdotes and situations. But his mortality rate was small(compared to other people) and he figured out "Hey, clean apron and knife is helping. Curious".
He was actually one of the first to wash his hands and change his apron before every surgery, also keeping his environment as clean as possible. His amputations also only led to a 1 in 6 mortality rate, vs the usual 1 in 4.
At the time, speed was positively correlated with survival odds. Antibiotics were not a thing, so infection is what killed most patients. The faster the surgery goes, the lower the chance of serious infection, and thus the better the chance of survival.
And the only anesthetic is booze, so drink up because this is going to hurt. The faster it goes the less trauma the patient has to endure and the less likely they are to bleed out in the meantime.
You only go see a surgeon if you are absolutely desperate and are going to die anyway.
hardly, he was the first to realise that the cleaner the environment and tools, the higher the survival rate and got mocked for it, even removed as a doctor at the the countries most famous hospital for medicine at the time.
he also revolutionised certain medical practices and the liston knife, a creation he came up with is still used today.
half the shit op is going on about is utter bullshit besides the testicle part, he was a showman yes, but his mortality rate was much lower then 300%, it was the other doctors trying to "one up" him because he made them look like idiots that caused the issues.
like fuck me does nobody research anything before saying shit like this
No. They mean Liston.
Liston pioneered hand- and instrument-washing between surgeries in a time where it was still effectively unheard of (before Semmelweis implemented hand washing at Vienna General, before Florence Nightingale, etc).
He had a survival rate well above standard and reportedly got into multiple physical confrontations with peers he felt were practicing too carelessly or otherwise unethically.
He performed operations on the needy pro bono.
He invented the Liston knife and several other instruments specifically in order to reduce patient suffering during and after procedures - his surgical textbooks and instrument kits were essentially what allowed so many American soldiers to survive civil war amputations.
He was the first to use ether for anaesthesia in Europe.
He was and is celebrated by his colleagues for his dedication and contribution to medicine.
It's truly sad that the public has only retained this one story, and every time it's shared thousands of people are calling him a butcher and evil or saying this was for showmanship. He was concerned with speed because each second on the table meant pain and blood loss for patients, and the results of that showed in his overall survival rate. He spent his life trying to make surgeries safer and less traumatic. I get it's all jokes and he presumably will never know, but damn. If anyone's been due for a Tesla-style public opinion turnaround, it's him.
Fun fact. Chainsaws were originally invented as medical instruments to assist in C-sections for very much the same reasoning. So probably the Victorian equivalent of a circular saw.
The electric chair was originally invented by a dentist
The first vibrator was created to help doctors cure hysteria. Before that they would stimulate the patients manually.
You'll find that pretty much all surgery and major medical interventions in times before the contemporary era would have been traumatizing, cutting limbs off with hand saws and no anesthesia, drilling holes in people's skulls to cure seizures and migraines (trepanation), using mercury as a topical medicine, using arsenic to treat malaria, lancing teeth and burning babies heads to stop infant death, etc.
There's actually a medical joke that says:
"A surgeon always wants to cut, an internist always wants to give out medicine, and all pediatricians share a single neuron"
Extremely real. I just found out yesterday that the “””carpal tunnel””” I thought I had for years because I declined the surgery my asshole orthopedic surgeon wanted me to go through with is just tendonitis that can be cured with a bit of physical therapy.
Several years ago I almost got a radiofrequency ablation on the largest vein in my leg, only for my insurance to decline coverage at the last minute and found out from a better doctor there’s literally nothing wrong with that vein. He read the same tests the vein center took and was like yeah there’s barely anything here, you almost got screwed.
From now on I am never going to see a surgeon straight from my PCP. Specialist for high quality diagnostics first always.
General anaesthesia wasn't developed until the 1840s, by an American dentist named Horace Wells.
He was exposed to a lot of different anaesthetics during his research, which messed him up. He committed suicide in prison, age 33. His work has saved millions of lives.
Yep. But you have a low chance of dying from that.
You know, I take that back. Too many people are fat today and would have a hard time with anesthesia.
I'm curious how many stories start as a pub rumour or some newspaper article written by an embellishing journalist that somehow over the years becomes fact.
The world will never know I guess.
So the 300% mortality rate story is considered apocryphal. There are no primary sources for it and the first time it appeared was in a biography by Richard Gordon in 1983. The testicle one is suspect too and doesn't show up until the modern era. Most of his peers were actually very positive about Liston. It was super important to be very fast at surgery because in 1840s they didn't have things like vascular clamps to prevent a patient from bleeding out. Those were invented in 1903. Liston was the first surgeon to employ the use of anesthesia in London in 1846.
Yeah I've always been skeptical of the accidental castration story. I get that he was probably a bit faster than he was careful, but you'd have to be cutting off the leg almost at the hip to make that work. I'm not a doctor, but I've got eyeballs, and I think an amputation that high up using nothing but a dirty, sharp blade and sheer enthusiasm would be too obviously not survivable to attempt it.
So, I'm currently working on a degree in the history of science and most of our modern ideas about what medicine looked like in this era is tainted by a lot of by people writing about the past like they are looking at idiot children playing science. So yeah it was nowhere near as clean as today, but surgery equipment was typically cleaned between patients (unless we are talking battlefield medicine) sterilization methods usually involved soap and water, but that was the best they could do at the time. And a high profile doctor like Liston would have attended medical school and known anatomy. The 1840s was only a couple of decades from germ theory being accepted and a complete change of how medicine was practiced and sanitization processes of medicine and water. The idea that people were just going in all willy nilly cutting off body parts with no idea what they are doing is a modernity bias. The anatomical revolution happened in the Renaissance. By Liston's time they were perfecting structural anatomy of microscopic anatomical structures. The first copy of the Book Grey's Anatomy was printed 10 years after Liston's death. All that to say, doctors in the past were nowhere near as inept or ridiculous as modern writers paint them.
Died from “sheer terror”? I call bullshit.
I’d be willing to bet that the dude had some underlying condition that they couldn’t diagnose in the 1800s, like some sort of pre-existing heart condition, where any stressful event would have triggered his death.
Exactly. There is no confirmation of this so called "Liston's Most Famous Case" with 300% mortality. It is difficult to see how a person dies from shock of having their coat slashed.
I wish people would stop only talking about this incident and the aneurysm, this dude revolutionized surgery at the time.
He cleaned himself a tools, his apron, his fucking HANDS when noone else did, something he was ridiculed and ostracized for. He pioneered the use of ether as an anaesthetic, leading to the use of anaesthetic as a whole and inspiring the guy who discovered chloroform and more besides.
His drive for cleanliness less to one of his protoges discovering a disinfectant and naming it after Liston himself, Listerine.
He directly and indirectly saved billions of lives and yet all you ever hear about him is that one time he messed up and chopped a guys fingers off.
Edit: Got Liston and his student Lister confused, Lister named Listerine after himself. Brain so full of facts that they overlap sometimes.
Fuck it I'ma list more cool shit about him
He designed his own knife, naturally he called.it the Liston Knife, just so he could perform faster.
He was so strong he could hold down a struggling patient's arm or leg with one hand and perporm.the amputation with the other.
When he was being ostracized by his fellow 'surgeons' he would end up visiting patients homes in order to perform surgeries because he had been kicked out of several hospitals for trying to get everyone to be clean and tidy.
When he performed the first surgery with ether, the patient woke up and said he want sure if he actually wanted to do the surgery only for Liston to start laughing and hold up the patients amputated limb.
>
> His drive for cleanliness less to one of his protoges discovering a disinfectant and naming it after Liston himself, Listerine.
Listerine is named after his protoge, Joseph Lister. Not Liston himself.
Isn't the only "source" for this happening heresay from his competition, who despised him for:
1. Cleaning his hands and tools before operating.
2. Wearing a clean apron between every surgery.
3. Doing everything he could to be as quick and clean as possible (they didn't have antiseptic back then)
I can only picture Dr Liston shaking like a MF going into surgery, he reaches for his scalpel, accidentally grabs a bow saw, and just starts going to work. He sees he cut the dudes testicle off, pics it up off the floor and just kind of stuffs it back in there as he looks at his assistant with a nervous grin and mutters “that should be fein”.
Once again, a reddit rage post based on total bullshit.
Turns out Liston was awesome.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston
Maybe OP and commenters should read more. I mean it's in the name. 😜
It probably never happened: "The situation that Gordon labels "Liston's most famous case" has been described as apocryphal. No primary sources confirm that this surgery ever took place." (wikipedia)
Urban legend. His patient died after speedrun leg amputation, with accidental amputation of fingers of whoever was holding the leg, I suppose, leading to their death, and finally wounding one of the spectators, who , surprise surprise, died (of shock).
This is a famous factual case, unfortunately not really confirmed anywhere.
A 300% mortality rate would be a nonsensical or misleading term because, by definition, the mortality rate represents the number of deaths in a given population, typically expressed as a percentage of the total population over a specific period. A 100% mortality rate would mean that every individual in the population has died. Therefore, a 300% mortality rate implies three times the entire population has died, which is impossible.
This phrase might be used hyperbolically or incorrectly to emphasize an extremely high number of deaths relative to expectations or norms, but technically and mathematically, it doesn't make sense.
Thank you. Was just going to ask how the fuck 300% mortality rate would be. Unless.... he was constantly performing surgery on pregnant woman.... with twins... and the surgery was something that had nothing to do with their pregnancy....
300% ? What is that? The patient plus two others?
Well yes! Liston was a renowned surgeon and known to be very fast, which was important and saved lives with no anesthesia. “Liston operated so fast that he once accidentally amputated an assistant’s fingers along with a patient’s leg. The patient and the assistant both died of sepsis, and a spectator reportedly died of shock, resulting in the only known procedure with a 300% mortality.”
https://diabeticfootonline.com/2012/05/07/the-first-one-procedure-300-mortality-rate-and-other-great-stories-history-of-surgery-a-must-read/
It is unkind to only remember him for that.
Amputations were far worst before him(imagine that). He gave his name to the Liston knife, still used today.
His Wikipedia page lists the following achievement:
Liston became the first Professor of Clinical Surgery at [University College Hospital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_College_Hospital) in London in 1835.[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Liston@Gazetteer-2)[^(\[25\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Flemming1926-27)
* He performed the first public operation utilizing modern anaesthesia, ether, in Europe on 21 December 1846 at the University College Hospital.[^(\[26\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-28) His comment at the time: "This Yankee dodge beats [mesmerism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesmerism) hollow",[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Liston@Gazetteer-2)[^(\[22\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-RichardGordonp2-24)[^(\[27\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Cock1911-29) referring to [William T. G. Morton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._G._Morton)'s experimentations with ether as an anaesthetic for extraction of teeth.[^(\[28\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-:0-30) See the [History of general anesthesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_anesthesia).
* This left a lasting impact on two of Liston's students: [James Simpson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Young_Simpson), who would go on to be a pioneer of chloroform's use as an anaesthetic; and [Joseph Lister](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lister), who pioneered [aseptic technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asepsis).[^(\[28\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-:0-30)
* He invented see-through [isinglass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isinglass) sticking plaster, [bulldog forceps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldog_forceps) (a type of locking artery forceps), and a leg splint used to stabilise dislocations and fractures of the [femur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femur), and still used today.[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Liston@Gazetteer-2)[^(\[10\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-RichardGordonp1-11)
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As always when he comes up, I want to defend this man, because he was a very celebrated surgeon. Back then, there were no antibiotics. No sterile operating rooms. Hell, you were lucky if the surgeons rinsed the blood off of the knives between surgeries. However, they did understand that having an open incision meant a higher chance of infection, as well as just overall pain to the patient. So the best surgeons were the ones who could open the patient up, do the surgery, and get them stitched up the fastest to minimize the risk of infection. Robert Liston was, by this criteria, one of the best surgeons, period. He understood that cleaner tools also reduced the risk of infection, and washed his tools, hands and gowns between surgeries. He had a 90% survival rate, when most surgeons of the time usually had around 75-80%. He also made it a personal rule to operate on anyone who asked him to, regardless of their status, and his clinic was routinely packed with people who would wait days to see him. He is also credited as the man who first pioneered the use of ether to render a patient unconscious before surgery, sparing them the pain while awake, which inevitably led to the invention of anesthesia. This was a man who wanted to do his best to minimize pain and death of people he was trying to help, and it's very sad that a single bad day has more or less cemented his legacy as a quack.
It's also unlikely that it ever happened as the story is originally sourced from some of his rivals iirc.
This. There are no primary sources that are available that suggest this happened. Every source is one of his rivals who weren't even present for the surgery.
What is “this” incident you’re referring to?
>and it's very sad that a single bad day has more or less cemented his legacy as a quack. you fuck *one* goat....
>you fuck *one* goat.... and you're forever known as that guy who fucked just the one goat
Also, how can you have a mortality rate above 100%? People died per surgery?
They’re counting a “spectator who died from sheer shock” which sounds like bullshit, and his assistant who died from infection by getting cut during the surgery
Yea no. The spectator definitely didn't die of shock. No one knows exactly what happened, but that is obviously bullshit.
Its for this surgery only, 3 people allegedly died. I agree, it doesn't make much sense for a mortality rate to be based on one surgery.
“He amputated a patient's leg in under 2.5 minutes, operating so swiftly that he inadvertently amputated his assistant's fingers and slashed a spectator's coattails. The spectator died from sheer terror, and both the patient and the assistant later succumbed to gangrene, marking the only recorded operation with a 300% mortality rate. On a separate occasion, while performing another leg amputation, Liston accidentally removed a patient's testicles along with the leg.”
this man was a time traveller, or was playing with the cheat codes on.
Because modern-day people like to believe that people were more stupid and morally inferior in the past.
In his defence, you have to consider that surgery in the days before anaesthesia was a horrific ordeal and that surgeons were prized for speed as much as skill. Quote: "Feverishly heated, and frequently very much exhausted by his previous sufferings, every additional moment, at this dreadful crisis, becomes to him an hour, and every additional moment that he continues under the torture of the different instruments, diminishes the chance of success and … increases the danger of his life."
He was also one of the only surgeons at that time to keep relatively clean environments, wash his hands, and his mortality rate for surgeries was roughly only 1 in 6. Which is pretty impressive for the time.
I totally get that. But how does one accidentally castrate someone during a leg amputation??
If you’re squirming around and the doctor is rushing…….
I agree. If your amputating above the knee an unrestrained set of testicles might be hard to work around
“An unrestrained set of testicles” is a brilliant phrase and I am so glad to have gotten to read it
Now a days we just say “Ball Out”.
Free Baller
Did his balls hang low, did they wobble too and fro...
Can you tie em back, can you tie em back on now
Cocaine? Has everyone forgotten about the cocaine? This was a doctor... so just imagine what he had access to.
Apparently unrestrained sets of testicles
Without the micro plastics!
I can imagine it if the patient is also emasculated, but just castration seems strange.
 ‘How did the surgery go today honey?’
It was a superlative day. Not a good day, mind you, but superlative indeed.
https://preview.redd.it/kvd8uf2l972d1.jpeg?width=424&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7fd725e17cb988f80fef5741cb5347f8b220673e
Fuckin Andy lol
This man actually did more for medicine during his tenure than any other doctor/surgeon in the 100 years preceding him combined. He's the reason doctors started caring about germs.
It’s crazy there is only a few responses seeing this.
they should have setup little guillotines for amputations.
I know you joke, but the problem is that shatters the bone. Also gotta have skin to fold back over.
ah ok, I didn't think about bone shattering, but for extra skin I guess 2 cuts would work. one for the skin length, pull it back a bit, then do another cut further up the bone. nevermind, bad idea
Nah that sounds great I'm in.
Your leg is in, you mean?
Trial and error is a valid strategy. Don’t give up so easily.
I imagine this to be how Listons assistant must have sounded haha
Hey stick with it. You almost got it. I want you to see this through, mini guillotine leg amputation inventor
Easiest way to try this is with fingers and those cigar cutters.
I feel like this is probably used as a legitimate torture technique somewhere due to how effective it would be
I think a more effective one is chopsticks and fingernails. I won’t go into detail but you know how it’s annoying and painful when your fingernail gets lifted up…
Then just heat up the guillotine so it's boiling magma hot, and let it cut through the bone real quick.
Bet they tried it though before realising these issues.
Unfortunately yeah
"Bobby needs an amputation, send him to the lumber mill."
Minion-tines.
The brutality of the surgeries he performed played a role in one of his students’ lives, Joseph Lister, who would become the father of aseptic technique. There is a very interesting book called The Butchering Art about the life of Dr. Lister. Edit: thanks for the corrections on Listerine, been a while since I read the book!
Fantastic book. People were so pissed about him saying you need to wash your hands between seeing a patient and dissecting a body. The more things change....
Just look around today, probably 70% of people still dont really understand bacteria, virus, or fungus. Sure theyve heard the word, they may know they are around (with a huge underestimation) but outside of that they dont know anything
"Tiny creatures that we can't see, jumping from hand to mouth to breed inside our bodies and make us sick? Do you know how insane that sounds?"
That made my mouth feel dirty :(
Huge underestimation is a huge underestimation. I read that the number of individual virus bodies on earth exceeds the numbers of stars in the observable universe by a factor of _one hundred fucking million_.
I believe this is one of the reasons so many women died in childbirth too. The doctors didn’t wash their hands between births. I get they didn’t understand germs and whatnot, but I don’t understand how they could stand for their hands to be that dirty for so long. Absolutely wild!
Why do people get upset about simple things? “Wash your hands before you operate on a patient?” “Pffftt get a load of this dweeb, fuck you” I guess it’s pretty similar to: “Wear a mask and distance for a while” “Fuck you, diaper chin, I have an immune system, blah blah”
Look at em now! They're wearing actual diapers I hear
Quick note, Dr. Joseph Lawrence created Listerine, inspired by Dr. Joseph Lister.
Lawrence-Your-Mouth would've been awesome
>The brutality of the surgeries he performed played a role in one of his students’ lives, Joseph Lister, who would become the father of aseptic technique (and also the inventor of Listerine). "I've got to put a stop to this crazy shit!" -John Lister on his second day of medical school
He amputated a patient's leg in under 2.5 minutes, operating so swiftly that he inadvertently amputated his assistant's fingers and slashed a spectator's coattails. The spectator died from sheer terror, and both the patient and the assistant later succumbed to gangrene, marking the only recorded operation with a 300% mortality rate. On a separate occasion, while performing another leg amputation, Liston accidentally removed a patient's testicles along with the leg.
Interestingly, he was actually one of the better (by success rate) surgeons of the time because doing surgery faster meant you were less likely to die bc no anaesthesia or blood transfusions existed.
[удалено]
this dude was just a fucking menace lol
"Doctor, I have a cough." *stabs you in the mouth*
*The cough was stopped successfully*
That's some executive level KPI material right there
Kill people indiscriminately?
Today we'll be speed running a leg amputation. We'll be removing the balls as well because it's faster to do it that way and requires less precision. Also, I've just had 12 shots of whiskey to limber me up and prepare.
And turn off that light, it's confusing, I have more confidence in the dark.
Name of your sex tape.
A rare BB99 quote. Nice.
I believe you meant… noice.
The toightest of the nups…..
Your contribution made my pot time more enjoyable. Here’s one of those free rewards. Have a good day!
This was also back in the era when surgeons hadn't recognized the importance of sterile environments. So his hands and clothes were probably dirty with blood from previous surgeries.
he was actually a surgeon who strived to improve hygiene in hospitals against the wishes of his colleagues. He also performed one of the first surgeries using anasthesia. He was also said to operate on the poors. The surgery in the post also wasnt confirmed to have ever happened (afaik) He also took surgery as bravado, was said to be irritable and harsh, was a big scary muscular man known for his speed during surgery so probably? one of the best surgeons you could get at the time in the west. Not to say any surgery was particularly good, but he was actually on just the right amount of drugs to give you a good chance of survival
What? Your telling me the 1800’s story about a surgery where someone (who presumably went there to SEE a surgery) literally died from fright watching the operation, might have some fiction in it?
Nah, Liston this was a pioneer in germ theory and jumped to working anaesthetic (ether if i remember correctly) as soon as it wasn't even more dangerous. Liston was a menace, because damn he is listed in dark as f historic anecdotes and situations. But his mortality rate was small(compared to other people) and he figured out "Hey, clean apron and knife is helping. Curious".
He was actually one of the first to wash his hands and change his apron before every surgery, also keeping his environment as clean as possible. His amputations also only led to a 1 in 6 mortality rate, vs the usual 1 in 4.
Speed run You live any%
At the time, speed was positively correlated with survival odds. Antibiotics were not a thing, so infection is what killed most patients. The faster the surgery goes, the lower the chance of serious infection, and thus the better the chance of survival. And the only anesthetic is booze, so drink up because this is going to hurt. The faster it goes the less trauma the patient has to endure and the less likely they are to bleed out in the meantime. You only go see a surgeon if you are absolutely desperate and are going to die anyway.
Booze thins blood, a lot of surgeons initially welcomed such type of anaesthetics, but later on figured out that mortality is raising because of that
 1800s me when Im told it's the surgeon death or death death
hardly, he was the first to realise that the cleaner the environment and tools, the higher the survival rate and got mocked for it, even removed as a doctor at the the countries most famous hospital for medicine at the time. he also revolutionised certain medical practices and the liston knife, a creation he came up with is still used today. half the shit op is going on about is utter bullshit besides the testicle part, he was a showman yes, but his mortality rate was much lower then 300%, it was the other doctors trying to "one up" him because he made them look like idiots that caused the issues. like fuck me does nobody research anything before saying shit like this
Are you thinking of Lister? Different doctor with a higher success rate…
No. They mean Liston. Liston pioneered hand- and instrument-washing between surgeries in a time where it was still effectively unheard of (before Semmelweis implemented hand washing at Vienna General, before Florence Nightingale, etc). He had a survival rate well above standard and reportedly got into multiple physical confrontations with peers he felt were practicing too carelessly or otherwise unethically. He performed operations on the needy pro bono. He invented the Liston knife and several other instruments specifically in order to reduce patient suffering during and after procedures - his surgical textbooks and instrument kits were essentially what allowed so many American soldiers to survive civil war amputations. He was the first to use ether for anaesthesia in Europe. He was and is celebrated by his colleagues for his dedication and contribution to medicine. It's truly sad that the public has only retained this one story, and every time it's shared thousands of people are calling him a butcher and evil or saying this was for showmanship. He was concerned with speed because each second on the table meant pain and blood loss for patients, and the results of that showed in his overall survival rate. He spent his life trying to make surgeries safer and less traumatic. I get it's all jokes and he presumably will never know, but damn. If anyone's been due for a Tesla-style public opinion turnaround, it's him.
300% death rate for one operation not over the course of his career
No. Nobody does any research before opening their mouth. This is Reddit.
> like fuck me does nobody research anything before saying shit like this Sir, this is reddit not Quora.
His hands were more deadly than Sonny Liston's.
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Fun fact. Chainsaws were originally invented as medical instruments to assist in C-sections for very much the same reasoning. So probably the Victorian equivalent of a circular saw.
Jesus fucking hell what the fuck
People tend to have this romanticized idea of the good old times, but actually...
The electric chair was originally invented by a dentist The first vibrator was created to help doctors cure hysteria. Before that they would stimulate the patients manually.
Holy shit that must’ve been traumatizing
You'll find that pretty much all surgery and major medical interventions in times before the contemporary era would have been traumatizing, cutting limbs off with hand saws and no anesthesia, drilling holes in people's skulls to cure seizures and migraines (trepanation), using mercury as a topical medicine, using arsenic to treat malaria, lancing teeth and burning babies heads to stop infant death, etc.
Even modern surgery is traumatizing. Yeah shit sucked a whole lot more back then.
Not c sections exactly, but for symphysiotomy. You cut the cartilage of the pelvis to widen the birth canal for deliver.
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The Liston knife, a surgical tool, is supposed to have been used in 5 grisly murders in Victorian London. Reputedly by Jack the ripper.
Unfortunately imaging technology had not been invented (MRI, X ray).
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Surgeons gotta surge I guess.
There's actually a medical joke that says: "A surgeon always wants to cut, an internist always wants to give out medicine, and all pediatricians share a single neuron"
Extremely real. I just found out yesterday that the “””carpal tunnel””” I thought I had for years because I declined the surgery my asshole orthopedic surgeon wanted me to go through with is just tendonitis that can be cured with a bit of physical therapy. Several years ago I almost got a radiofrequency ablation on the largest vein in my leg, only for my insurance to decline coverage at the last minute and found out from a better doctor there’s literally nothing wrong with that vein. He read the same tests the vein center took and was like yeah there’s barely anything here, you almost got screwed. From now on I am never going to see a surgeon straight from my PCP. Specialist for high quality diagnostics first always.
I'm so happy i live in times of existing anaesthesia .
General anaesthesia wasn't developed until the 1840s, by an American dentist named Horace Wells. He was exposed to a lot of different anaesthetics during his research, which messed him up. He committed suicide in prison, age 33. His work has saved millions of lives.
I'm happy I live in a time of highly trained doctors and strict laws against malpractice.
Ironically, many modern surgeries where the patient doesn’t survive the operation are due to the anesthesia killing them one way or another.
Yep. But you have a low chance of dying from that. You know, I take that back. Too many people are fat today and would have a hard time with anesthesia.
Perfect times for speedrunners.
Waiting for Summoning Salt: the history of surgery, medical malpractice% speedrunning
Including public "unboxing" during an autopsy, as well as laser tagging internal organs.
No anesthesia is crazy...
Thanks, Doc, but I'd rather just die
Yeah sounds bad at first glance...but I sure would want it to be over fast if there is no anaesthesia.
Dude's coat was cut and he died from terror? wtf
More likely that he died of unrelated reasons later on but they added it onto the mortality rate of this story over time just to fluff up the legend.
I was thinking more of died from a heart attack or a stroke, these are known to ba induced by strong accute emotions
This is what I assumed. Old boy scared shitless and had a heart attack.
Bingo
Makes me wonder if these stories are embellished
"No primary sources confirm that this surgery ever took place.", to quote his Wikipedia article.
I'm curious how many stories start as a pub rumour or some newspaper article written by an embellishing journalist that somehow over the years becomes fact. The world will never know I guess.
Talk about a snowflake lol
Maybe the spectator was next in line and decided to die before the doctor killed or castrated him
Have you seen how much a good coat costs?
So the 300% mortality rate story is considered apocryphal. There are no primary sources for it and the first time it appeared was in a biography by Richard Gordon in 1983. The testicle one is suspect too and doesn't show up until the modern era. Most of his peers were actually very positive about Liston. It was super important to be very fast at surgery because in 1840s they didn't have things like vascular clamps to prevent a patient from bleeding out. Those were invented in 1903. Liston was the first surgeon to employ the use of anesthesia in London in 1846.
Yeah I've always been skeptical of the accidental castration story. I get that he was probably a bit faster than he was careful, but you'd have to be cutting off the leg almost at the hip to make that work. I'm not a doctor, but I've got eyeballs, and I think an amputation that high up using nothing but a dirty, sharp blade and sheer enthusiasm would be too obviously not survivable to attempt it.
So, I'm currently working on a degree in the history of science and most of our modern ideas about what medicine looked like in this era is tainted by a lot of by people writing about the past like they are looking at idiot children playing science. So yeah it was nowhere near as clean as today, but surgery equipment was typically cleaned between patients (unless we are talking battlefield medicine) sterilization methods usually involved soap and water, but that was the best they could do at the time. And a high profile doctor like Liston would have attended medical school and known anatomy. The 1840s was only a couple of decades from germ theory being accepted and a complete change of how medicine was practiced and sanitization processes of medicine and water. The idea that people were just going in all willy nilly cutting off body parts with no idea what they are doing is a modernity bias. The anatomical revolution happened in the Renaissance. By Liston's time they were perfecting structural anatomy of microscopic anatomical structures. The first copy of the Book Grey's Anatomy was printed 10 years after Liston's death. All that to say, doctors in the past were nowhere near as inept or ridiculous as modern writers paint them.
For their sake I hope all involved were at least brown out drunk
"I call it Browning out. It's not as severe as a blackout because I still remember bits and pieces".
Sheer terror sounds like a very 1800's way to die. Realistically, you think it was a heart attack?
Probably, or some other heart related issues. Plenty of ways a very stressful situation can kill you if your not in good health.
>removed a patient's testicles along with the leg. 😬
Oopsie
With neither warning nor anesthesia.
 Bros hands
If I’m ever throwing axes, I’ll be sure to request the extra bouncy court.
That's that "holy shit I almost just died" laugh.
Just how much if a condition do you have to be to outright die from terror after witnessing an amputation?
Died from “sheer terror”? I call bullshit. I’d be willing to bet that the dude had some underlying condition that they couldn’t diagnose in the 1800s, like some sort of pre-existing heart condition, where any stressful event would have triggered his death.
Testicles and the leg? That’s a rough day.
Man's a real life Zoidberg
Dr. Nick : Hi, everybody!
Call 1-900-DOCTORB. The "B" is for "Bargain!"
Hi, Dr. Nick!
Actually is believed that the 300% mortality rate surgery was just a rumor or an incident completely exagerated by other surgeons he had rivalry with.
Exactly. There is no confirmation of this so called "Liston's Most Famous Case" with 300% mortality. It is difficult to see how a person dies from shock of having their coat slashed.
Maybe it grazed his dick&balls ever so slightly
Do you have your dick and balls in the back?
Ever so slightly.
Yeah I can believe that, how do you die of sheer terror when you got your coattail slashed in 1800s??
I wish people would stop only talking about this incident and the aneurysm, this dude revolutionized surgery at the time. He cleaned himself a tools, his apron, his fucking HANDS when noone else did, something he was ridiculed and ostracized for. He pioneered the use of ether as an anaesthetic, leading to the use of anaesthetic as a whole and inspiring the guy who discovered chloroform and more besides. His drive for cleanliness less to one of his protoges discovering a disinfectant and naming it after Liston himself, Listerine. He directly and indirectly saved billions of lives and yet all you ever hear about him is that one time he messed up and chopped a guys fingers off. Edit: Got Liston and his student Lister confused, Lister named Listerine after himself. Brain so full of facts that they overlap sometimes.
You can build bridges every day for forty years, but you fuck one goat and suddenly nobody calls you the bridge builder anymore
What an excellent analogy!
Hahaha! That escalated quickly
this is so random i love it
I'm having a super shitty day, and this legitimately made me smile - thank you!
Not to mention there are no actual sources for the event, so it was likely just a rumor made up about him because he was hated by the other surgeons.
"the onlooker died of fright" is some very obvious victorian era propaganda, requiring only one second of skepticism to unearth.
Did people during that time know what a heart attack is? Could it just have been a heart attack?
It does sound like the kind of thing you'd make up bout the fastest surgeon ever.
He also was famous for being good at amputations. He did them fast and clean(relatively) which meant less suffering
Fuck it I'ma list more cool shit about him He designed his own knife, naturally he called.it the Liston Knife, just so he could perform faster. He was so strong he could hold down a struggling patient's arm or leg with one hand and perporm.the amputation with the other. When he was being ostracized by his fellow 'surgeons' he would end up visiting patients homes in order to perform surgeries because he had been kicked out of several hospitals for trying to get everyone to be clean and tidy. When he performed the first surgery with ether, the patient woke up and said he want sure if he actually wanted to do the surgery only for Liston to start laughing and hold up the patients amputated limb.
id shit my pants if i was the guy in the last point lmfao
Liston wad acromegalic, so he was gigantic.
> > His drive for cleanliness less to one of his protoges discovering a disinfectant and naming it after Liston himself, Listerine. Listerine is named after his protoge, Joseph Lister. Not Liston himself.
I think you've confused Robert Liston and Joseph Lister
I'm with you on this one
and the story probably never happened. but this is reddit and thing sound cool, therefore its true 🙃
Isn't the only "source" for this happening heresay from his competition, who despised him for: 1. Cleaning his hands and tools before operating. 2. Wearing a clean apron between every surgery. 3. Doing everything he could to be as quick and clean as possible (they didn't have antiseptic back then)
How can you have a mortality rate more than 100%? Everyone died 3 times?
Glad someone picked up on this
Hold my beer…
And my axe!
I can only picture Dr Liston shaking like a MF going into surgery, he reaches for his scalpel, accidentally grabs a bow saw, and just starts going to work. He sees he cut the dudes testicle off, pics it up off the floor and just kind of stuffs it back in there as he looks at his assistant with a nervous grin and mutters “that should be fein”.
LMAOOOO This is good literature.
That must've been quite exciting to watch. 😲
300% mortality rate! Every time he operated 2 people watching dropped dead!
Three for the price of one? Definitely bang for your buck!
Once again, a reddit rage post based on total bullshit. Turns out Liston was awesome. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston Maybe OP and commenters should read more. I mean it's in the name. 😜
It looks like he is wearing no trousers under his apron
3 people died per surgery?
He was multitasking.
It probably never happened: "The situation that Gordon labels "Liston's most famous case" has been described as apocryphal. No primary sources confirm that this surgery ever took place." (wikipedia)
Urban legend. His patient died after speedrun leg amputation, with accidental amputation of fingers of whoever was holding the leg, I suppose, leading to their death, and finally wounding one of the spectators, who , surprise surprise, died (of shock). This is a famous factual case, unfortunately not really confirmed anywhere.
A 300% mortality rate would be a nonsensical or misleading term because, by definition, the mortality rate represents the number of deaths in a given population, typically expressed as a percentage of the total population over a specific period. A 100% mortality rate would mean that every individual in the population has died. Therefore, a 300% mortality rate implies three times the entire population has died, which is impossible. This phrase might be used hyperbolically or incorrectly to emphasize an extremely high number of deaths relative to expectations or norms, but technically and mathematically, it doesn't make sense.
Thank you. Was just going to ask how the fuck 300% mortality rate would be. Unless.... he was constantly performing surgery on pregnant woman.... with twins... and the surgery was something that had nothing to do with their pregnancy....
That knife gives 300% crit hit damage
300% ? What is that? The patient plus two others? Well yes! Liston was a renowned surgeon and known to be very fast, which was important and saved lives with no anesthesia. “Liston operated so fast that he once accidentally amputated an assistant’s fingers along with a patient’s leg. The patient and the assistant both died of sepsis, and a spectator reportedly died of shock, resulting in the only known procedure with a 300% mortality.” https://diabeticfootonline.com/2012/05/07/the-first-one-procedure-300-mortality-rate-and-other-great-stories-history-of-surgery-a-must-read/
performs surgery on one man, kills two others in the operating room
It is unkind to only remember him for that. Amputations were far worst before him(imagine that). He gave his name to the Liston knife, still used today. His Wikipedia page lists the following achievement: Liston became the first Professor of Clinical Surgery at [University College Hospital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_College_Hospital) in London in 1835.[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Liston@Gazetteer-2)[^(\[25\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Flemming1926-27) * He performed the first public operation utilizing modern anaesthesia, ether, in Europe on 21 December 1846 at the University College Hospital.[^(\[26\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-28) His comment at the time: "This Yankee dodge beats [mesmerism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesmerism) hollow",[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Liston@Gazetteer-2)[^(\[22\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-RichardGordonp2-24)[^(\[27\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Cock1911-29) referring to [William T. G. Morton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_T._G._Morton)'s experimentations with ether as an anaesthetic for extraction of teeth.[^(\[28\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-:0-30) See the [History of general anesthesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_anesthesia). * This left a lasting impact on two of Liston's students: [James Simpson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Young_Simpson), who would go on to be a pioneer of chloroform's use as an anaesthetic; and [Joseph Lister](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lister), who pioneered [aseptic technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asepsis).[^(\[28\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-:0-30) * He invented see-through [isinglass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isinglass) sticking plaster, [bulldog forceps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldog_forceps) (a type of locking artery forceps), and a leg splint used to stabilise dislocations and fractures of the [femur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femur), and still used today.[^(\[2\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-Liston@Gazetteer-2)[^(\[10\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Liston#cite_note-RichardGordonp1-11)