Wild Card Book Club - The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris

Come join us for a lively discussion about The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris. Let's delve into the intriguing world of Victorian surgery as we explore this fascinating book together.

Get ready to share your thoughts, insights, and maybe even some "eew" moments as we dissect (pun intended) this historical non-fiction gem.

Mark your calendars and bring your enthusiasm for our in-person gathering. Let's dissect this book over some coffee and good company. See you there!

Ticket includes a copy of The Butchering Art and $10 towards your first cocktail at

• Come to meet new people and have a great conversation!
• Discussion led by Rediscovered Books Booksellers, Amy and Diane.
• Enjoy a cocktail or glass of wine.
• Seating is limited to 12 participants, registration is required for each person.
• Haven’t finished the book? Come anyway, but we cannot promise no spoilers.
• Must be 21 or older to attend.

If you have already purchased the book from Rediscovered Books, please email a copy of your receipt to [email protected] and we will issue you a gift card equal to the cost of the book after you have registered.

About the Book:

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. She conjures up early operating theaters--no place for the squeamish--and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than patients' afflictions, and they were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. At a time when surgery couldn't have been more hazardous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister, who would solve the riddle and change the course of history.

Fitzharris dramatically reconstructs Lister's career path to his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection and could be countered by a sterilizing agent applied to wounds. She introduces us to Lister's contemporaries--some of them brilliant, some outright criminal--and leads us through the grimy schools and squalid hospitals where they learned their art, the dead houses where they studied, and the cemeteries they ransacked for cadavers.

Eerie and illuminating, The Butchering Art celebrates the triumph of a visionary surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Ochos Cocktail and Wine Bar, 511, Boise, United States