UNDER THE KNIFE

THE HISTORY OF SURGERY IN 28 REMARKABLE OPERATIONS

John Murray, 368pp, £20, Oldie price £13.59 inc p&p

Under the Knife is the first book by Dutch surgeon Arnold van de Laar, who, wrote Gerard Degroot in the

Times, is ‘clearly in love with his profession and consumed by his need to tell people about it’. With chapters on castration, kidney stones, anal fistulas and the world’s first ‘tummy tuck’ – the surgical removal of fat performed on the son of a Roman consul – it is, Degroot warned, ‘not for the squeamish, nor for those on an NHS waiting list’. The book is not strictly what it says on the tin, he went on, as although it is supposed to be a description of individual operations from Roman times, it is in truth ‘a torrent of quirky stories – a surgical stream of consciousness lacking logical order’. Nevertheless, he fairly gushed, ‘the wonderful enthusiasm and droll sense of humour make this book irresistible’. And Helen Brown in the Irish

Independent agreed it was a ‘fascinating history of surgery’ that didn’t ‘aim to be comprehensive, just eye-opening and, frequently, eye-watering’.

The book is essentially about famous people and their need for surgery, with a cast, Degroot informed us, that includes ‘John F Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Bob Marley, Queen Victoria, Louis XIV, Albert Einstein and Harry Houdini’. Some of the stories are about operations that didn’t take place rather than did, with fatal results, as in the case of Houdini, who refused an appendectomy and died.

‘ Under the Knife is not a particularly profound book, but it is a lot of fun,’ concluded Degroot. Just don’t read it over breakfast.