Genius on the Edge

A major new biography of the doctor who invented modern surgery. Brilliant,driven, but haunted by demons, William Stewart Halsted took surgery from ahorrific, dangerous practice to what we now know as a lifesaving art.Halsted was born to wealth and privilege in New York City in the mid-1800s. Heattended the finest schools, but he was a mediocre student. His academic interestsblossomed at medical school and he quickly became a celebrated surgeon.Experimenting with cocaine as a local...
More Description

A major new biography of the doctor who invented modern surgery. Brilliant,driven, but haunted by demons, William Stewart Halsted took surgery from ahorrific, dangerous practice to what we now know as a lifesaving art.Halsted was born to wealth and privilege in New York City in the mid-1800s. Heattended the finest schools, but he was a mediocre student. His academic interestsblossomed at medical school and he quickly became a celebrated surgeon.Experimenting with cocaine as a local anesthetic, he became addicted. He washospitalized and treated with morphine to control his craving for cocaine. For theremaining 40 years of his life he was addicted to both drugs.Halsted resurrected his career at Johns Hopkins, where he became the first chiefof surgery. Among his accomplishments, he introduced the residency trainingsystem, the use of sterile gloves, the first successful hernia repair, radical mastectomy,fine silk sutures, and anatomically correct surgical technique. Halsted iswithout doubt the father of modern surgery, and his eccentric behavior, unusuallifestyle, and counterintuitive productivity in the face of lifelong addiction makehis story unusually compelling.Gerald Imber, a renowned surgeon himself, evokes Halsted’s extraordinary lifeand achievements and places them squarely in the historical and social context ofthe late 19th century. The result is an illuminating biography of a complex andtroubled man, whose genius we continue to benefit from today.