Review: Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations

Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations by Arnold van de Laar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love medical history, so I thought I would really enjoy this book. The introduction was the best bit for me. Unfortunately, the 28 operations did not seem to be in any kind of chronological order (I realise it would have been a little tricky, as most chapters have the whole history of the particular operation in, but some kind of chronological order would have helped me, as I don’t know that much about general history), and, for me, varied enormously from mostly tedious to reasonably interesting. I found that some chapters had what seemed to me superfluous historical detail that didn’t in any way relate to the operations, and almost none of them had enough detail about the operations and medical history. I guess it’s difficult to suit everyone’s tastes.

I also found the author was disparaging about various things, breaking through the general impartiality (for example, calling Star Wars a half baked fairy tale), which was disconcerting. I also found the whole epilogue a little strange, only looking at films to predict where surgery might go in the future. The author’s use of statistics was also imprecise at one point - he stated that when one takes an average, that means half the data points are above, and half below, which actually very much depends upon which kind of average you take!

However, overall the book was quite interesting, hence the three stars. Oh, but don’t read it if you have any problem with blood, pus or brain matter flying about!

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