Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery / Richard Hollingham, 319 p.

I realize that I never finished this post. The title says it all here, from a mind-blowing 30-second leg amputation without anesthetic, to current trends in face and hand surgery. The most poignant section for me dealt with the beginnings of plastic surgery during WWI, when the human race's capacity for destruction was way ahead of its skills in reconstruction. The stories of some of these men who endured incredible pain and humiliation over periods of years in order to finally have a nose or jaw of sorts were truly pitiful.

A recurrent theme in this book is that most important advances in surgery happened because of particular surgeons who persisted in trying new techniques in spite of the often horrible consequences for their individual patients. The more humane men (and yes, they were all men, effectively) who couldn't stomach the risk of trying a new way to cut open a living skull also didn't push us any closer to the relatively safe surgeries we have available today. The 'leaders' often seemed more like sociopaths in their callous disregard for their initial outcomes. So maybe sociopaths have their place in society, too.