"Grisly" is the perfect word to describe this book. There are detailed descriptions of surgeries-gone-wrong. Don't read it if you're squeamish. Also, don't read it without Google. I think the target audience has slightly more medical knowledge than me. I had to Google a few diseases because I'm not a doctor, and the author doesn't explain.

If you couldn't tell from the title, the book is a biography of Joseph Lister. He was a surgeon/professor in Scotland in the 1800s. His life goal was to figure out why wounds get infected and how to stop infections. Spoiler alert: He eventually figured it out. Then his challenge became convincing the medical world that you shouldn't slice people open without disinfecting stuff first. I like that the author and Joseph Lister both acknowledge that discoveries don't happen in a vacuum. Lister couldn't have made his medical advancements without building on the work of other scientists. Biographies sometimes glorify one person and ignore everybody who helped or influenced that person. This biography spreads the credit around.

The book is extremely focused on Lister's medical career. I wish we'd learned more about his life outside of work. We learn a tiny bit about his family and his Quaker beliefs, but that's it. Lister said he didn't want his personal life written about, so maybe information about his day-to-day life doesn't exist? I don't know. His fascination with germs gets slightly tedious to read about after 200+ pages of it. Still, I highly recommend this book if you're interested in medical history. It'll make you grateful that you don't live in the 1800s. That stuff was nasty. (The top hats were cool, though.)