5 Life and times

Novelist and academic Lindsey Fitzharris

THE SIX-YEAR anniversary of my mother’s double mastectomy is approaching, which puts me in a thoughtful mood. The soundtrack and visuals of this event are still vivid to me. I remember the dull hum of the fluorescent lights in the waiting room; a group of women rushing through the halls towards the maternity ward; and the long hours as we waited for the surgeon to tell us whether the cancer had spread beyond my mother’s breast.

The medical historian in me is comforted that advances in breast-cancer treatment have come a long way in a short time. No longer do women have to endure mastectomies without anaesthetic, as the novelist Fanny Burney did in 1811. In a letter to her sister, she wrote that the ‘evil was profound’. Her doctor placed a handkerchief over her eyes, but Burney could still see the ‘dreadful steel’ as it plunged into her breast.

Pain was not the only challenge facing women in earlier times. Before Joseph Lister developed antisepsis in the 1860s, the risk of post-operative infection was extremely high. Because of this, most surgeons advised patients against going under the knife. Indeed, Lister was forced to perform a mastectomy on his own sister as she lay on his dining table, after several surgeons refused to operate on her. Using his newly developed antiseptic techniques, he saved her life.

I’m happy to report that my mother’s mastectomy was also a success, and today she is cancer-free. Like so many women in the 21st century, her life has been shaped by cancer, but not defined by it, thanks to the legacy of doctors and patients who came before her. I feel very grateful.

I RECENTLY STUMBLED upon a charming antiques shop in Northamptonshire while driving in the countryside with Adrian, my husband, one Sunday afternoon. It was stuffed full of delightful oddities like an Edison phonograph from the 1880s, a Japanese parasol made of rice paper, and a Victorian music box. I was just about to leave when I noticed an industrial-looking lamp fashioned from a tin hat and gas mask from the First World War. It was love at first sight.

The shop owner was surprised when I asked to buy it. I don’t think he was expecting an American woman to fall in love with this steampunk nightmare he had cobbled together. But I explained that acquiring it seemed fitting as I have a deep interest in the history of plastic surgery and the reconstruction of soldiers’ faces during the war.

I’m pretty sure he still thought I was weird, but I’m used to that.

LATELY, I’VE BEEN preparing for a trip to Texas, where I’ll be speaking at a conference hosted by the Association of American Medical Colleges. I’ve been invited to give a lecture on how the discovery of germs transformed the brutal world of Victorian surgery, bringing centuries of savagery, sawing and gangrene to an end (the subject of my book,

The Butchering Art).

I hope to demolish any lingering romantic notions people might have about what it was like to live in the past, by reminding them how easy it was to die from conditions and diseases that are entirely treatable today. The last time I gave a lecture, a man fainted. I’m hoping to add more swooners to my list of conquests – though in a room full of doctors, I don’t fancy my chances.

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest To Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, by Lindsey Fitzharris, is published by Penguin Books, £9.99

The last time I gave a lecture, a man fainted. I’m hoping to add more swooners to my list