Hey Everyone! It’s First Line Friday. So grab a book near you and share the first line in the comments below!
Today I’m sharing the first line from The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris. It is a nonfiction book on Joseph Lister’s Quest to transform the grisly world of Victorian medicine. I picked it up with plans to skim it for research questions pertaining to a work in progress and wound up devouring it like a novel. Seriously, I read this thing cover to cover which is not my norm for a nonfiction book. It is very well written and I found the medical history combined with Lister’s personal life to be simply fascinating. That said, it’s probably not something you want to read over lunch.
Here are the first lines:
On the afternoon of December 21, 1846, hundreds of men crowded into the operating theater at London’s University College Hospital, where the city’s most renowned surgeon was preparing to enthrall them with a mid-thigh amputation.
Winner, 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing
Short-listed for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize
A Top 10 Science Book of Fall 2017, Publishers Weekly
A Best History Book of 2017, The Guardian
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery and shows how it was transformed by advances made in germ theory and antiseptics between 1860 and 1875. She conjures up early operating theaters—no place for the squeamish—and surgeons, who, working before anesthesia, were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than patients’ afflictions, and they were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. At a time when surgery couldn’t have been more hazardous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister, who would solve the riddle and change the course of history.
Fitzharris dramatically reconstructs Lister’s career path to his audacious claim that germs were the source of all infection and could be countered by a sterilizing agent applied to wounds. She introduces us to Lister’s contemporaries—some of them brilliant, some outright criminal—and leads us through the grimy schools and squalid hospitals where they learned their art, the dead houses where they studied, and the cemeteries they ransacked for cadavers.
Eerie and illuminating, The Butchering Art celebrates the triumph of a visionary surgeon whose quest to unite science and medicine delivered us into the modern world.
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Now it’s your turn to grab the book nearest you and leave a comment with the first (or your favorite) line!
Then head over to Hoarding Books to see who else is participating:
Happy Friday and weekend! My first line is from “KNOX: The Montana Marshalls” by Susan May Warren:
“Oh goody, now Knox go to watch his trouble-making little brother break his ornery neck.”
Ha! That sounds entertaining. Thanks for sharing!
Well, ok! My first line comes from The Lady of Tarpon Springs by Judith Miller. “Zanna Krykos closed her eyes and offered a silent prayer for God’s direction.” I am eager to read this book since I spent the first year of my marriage in Tarpon Springs.
LOL Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
That’s a first line…I don’t know if I could read that book. LOL!
Happy Friday!
Today on my blog I am sharing the first line from A Hero for Miss Hatherleigh by Carolyn Miller: https://christianfictiongirl.blog/2019/03/14/first-line-friday-79/. I am really enjoying the story! I am currently in the middle of chapter 19, so I will leave a line from that chapter.
“Gideon waited in the drawing room, not daring to sit down, not daring to pace as he’d like to, in case the stoic footman at the door see him and make a fuss. What was taking her so long?”
Hope you have a great weekend. Happy reading! 🙂💜📚
It definitely isn’t for everyone. LOL
I like that title. I’ve been meaning to read one of Caryolyn’s books.
Thanks for sharing!
Looks like it could be a shocking read!
Today on my blog I shared the first line from Fated by Teri Terry but I’m currently reading Dead Letter by Chautona Havig. I just started so I’ll share the first line from chapter 2 where I currently am: “Hard benches, spartan furnishings, packed conditions—though she’d purchased a second-class ticket as instructed, Madeline couldn’t help but feel like she’d gotten little better than emigrant car accommodations.” Hope you have a great weekend! Spring is in the air! 🙂
Sounds like the lady is used to better. 😉 Thanks for sharing!
Today I’m sharing the first line from The Memory House by Rachel Hauck:
“She was never afraid of the dark. But the light? Now that terrified her.”
Have a great weekend!
https://moments-of-beauty.blogspot.com/2019/03/first-line-fridays-memory-house-by.html
Oooh. Great line. 🙂
Happy Friday! Over on my blog I’m sharing from the first book in Robin Patchen’s Beauty in Flight trilogy. This is the first line from the second book, Beauty in Hiding:
“Of course it was raining.”
Nice title. Intriguing. 🙂
Oh dear. Now I’m torn. My history-loving intellectual side says, “That sounds absolutely fascinating” and my realist side says, “You get woozy at the mere mention of medical procedures. This will not end well.” Lol!
I’ve shared the first line from Crystal Walton’s “Romancing the Conflicted Cowboy” on my blog, but since I’m reading Carolyn Miller’s “A Hero for Miss Hatherleigh” right now, I’ll share the first line of the scene I’m up to (in chapter 5):
Gideon looked up from the specimen and almost dropped it.
Have a great weekend 🙂
I understand exactly what you mean. Thanks for sharing!