Robert Liston: The Only Surgeon With a 300% Mortality Rate
He killed three people at once in the operating room
Did you read that right? Yeah, 300% mortality rate. The only surgeon in history with that medal!
Robert Liston was born in 1794 in Ecclesmachan, Scotland. He quickly became known as the fastest surgeon around; he would pass out amputations like candy in less than five minutes.
Anesthesia wasn’t a thing back then, so surgeons had to be quick, yet, not so efficient all of the time. Most surgeons on the quick side of slashing would lose at least one in four patients, Liston however, would lose one in 10.
British surgeon Richard Gordon claims that Liston would perform a leg amputation in two and a half minutes; at one point, he claimed Liston did it in 28 seconds.
“Time me, gentlemen,” he would say, holding up his knife. “Time me.”
Despite the insane deaths I’ll mention below, Liston would be one of the first surgeons to use and pull off a successful surgery when anesthesia was invented. He was a brilliant surgeon of his time; most of his surgeries were thriving — all but a few, in which he gained horrible fame for.
