'This is history with a surgeon's touch: deft, incisive and sometimes excruciatingly bloody' The Sunday Times

'Utterly eccentric and riveting' Mail on Sunday

'Eye-opening and, frequently, eye-watering . . . a book that invites readers to peer up the bottoms of kings, into the souls of rock stars and down the ear canals of astronauts' Daily Telegraph

How did a decision made in the operating theatre spark hundreds of conspiracy theories about JFK?
How did a backstage joke prove fatal to world-famous escape artist Harry Houdini?
How did Queen Victoria change the course of surgical history?

Through dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today's sterile, high-tech operating theatres, surgeon Arnold van de Laar uses his experience and expertise to tell an incisive history of the past, present and future of surgery.

From JFK to Einstein and Houdini, this is a fascinating history of surgery recalled in 28 famous operations. Using his personal experience and expertise, this is both a rich cultural history and a modern anatomy class for us all.

In this witty chronicle, surgeon Arnold van de Laar dissects thousands of years' worth of remarkably gruesome stories. From anaesthetic-free amputations and bloodletting to Albert Einstein's aneurysm, these are key insights into the cut and thrust of medicine