Written in a personal and engaging style, this book provides a fascinating and informative introduction to the development of surgery through the ages. It describes the key advances in surgery through the ages, from primitive techniques such as trepanning, some of the gruesome but occasionally successful methods employed by the ancient civilizations, the increasingly sophisticated techniques of the Greeks and Romans, the advances of the Dark Ages and the Renaissance and on to the early pioneers of anesthesia and antisepsis such as Morton, Lister and Pasteur.