Arnold van de Laar – författare

Surgeon Arnold van de Laar uses his own experience and expertise to tell this engrossing history of surgery through 28 famous operations—from Louis XIV and Einstein to JFK and Houdini.From the story of the desperate man from seventeenth-century Amsterdam who grimly cut a stone out of his own bladder to Bob Marley''s deadly toe, Under the Knife offers a wealth of fascinating and unforgettable insights into medicine and history via the operating room.What happens during an operation? How does the human body respond to being attacked by a knife, a bacterium, a cancer cell or a bullet? And, as medical advances continuously push the boundaries of what medicine can cure, what are the limits of surgery?With stories spanning the dark centuries of bloodletting and amputations without anaesthetic through today''s sterile, high-tech operating rooms, Under the Knife is both a rich cultural history, and a modern anatomy class for us all.

''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'' The Daily TelegraphHow 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 the dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today''s sterile, high-tech operating theatres, Under the Knife is both a rich cultural history, and a modern anatomy class for us all.