Lindsey Fitzharris Books in Order

In nineteenth-century operating theaters, surviving surgery often meant facing deadly infection afterward. Joseph Lister’s efforts to understand and prevent those infections reveal how germ theory and antiseptic methods transformed a brutal profession into safer medicine.

Surgeon Harold Gillies confronts the devastating facial injuries of the First World War by developing new reconstructive techniques. His work restores more than appearance, helping wounded soldiers reclaim identities and lives in a society that often rejects them.

From smallpox and rabies to the Black Death, this illustrated history follows diseases that changed human lives and civilizations. Their symptoms, misguided treatments and eventual medical breakthroughs reveal the long struggle to understand and combat illness.

A tour of medical history explores treatments, diagnoses and experiments that went badly wrong, sometimes leading to important discoveries. Stories and illustrations show how accidents and failed ideas helped reshape understanding of the human body.

Edinburgh surgeon Joseph Bell could infer a patient’s habits and history from minute observations. His remarkable methods inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and drew him into the mysteries and criminal investigations of Victorian Britain.