Writer of the Month: Richard Barnett on Crucial Interventions

In this talk medical historian Richard Barnett explores surgery
during the 19th century, from the application of antisepsis to
experiments with hypnosis. What happened in the early operations
that used anaesthesia, and why were patients initially reluctant
to agree to it?


Richard Barnett is a writer and broadcaster on the cultural
history of science and medicine. He teaches on the Pembroke-Kings
Programme in Cambridge, and in 2011 received one of the first
Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellowships. His books include Medical
London: City of Diseases: City of Cures, The Sick Rose (described
by Will Self in the Guardian as 'superbly lucid and erudite') and
Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles
and Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery, which was published
by Thames & Hudson in cooperation with the Wellcome
Collection in October 2015.