Imagine lying on a table in a old-school operating room. Faces stare down at you from the viewing galleries above, and your leg throbs with pain from a broken bone -- infection is just starting to set ...

Robert Liston, who died in his prime of an aortic aneurysm on December 7, 1847, is chiefly remembered as the first surgeon in Europe to operate under ether anæsthesia. He remarked at the time: “This ...