A very nice quotation-rich biography of Joseph Lister. I especially enjoyed the discussion of all of his opponents and their various comments. They remind me of the definition of an expert - the person most surprised by news to the contrary. There are many other entertaining and enlightening items e.g. that Lister had an "unreasoned dread of wet feet", the term phagedenic ulcer, Friederich Engels' comment about the poverty in Glasgow, Lister's lecturing technique, the origin of Listerine, Lister and Robert Wood Johnson, etc.
I was hoping to see some mention of the fact that Lister worked in his filthy street clothes and without gloves (first used by Halstead), even while spraying carbolic acid in the air, and some mention of Lister and Robert Koch.
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Some relatively trivial complaints:
One may look or even gaze into a microscope, but one does not "squint" into one. The author says on page 168, that mycobacterial psoas abscesses were prone to infection, but they are, of course, already infected, and I think she means, superinfection. When Lister looked at slide preparations of bone tumors, he was examining their histology - to say he was examining their cell structure is slightly misleading, especially considering the stains that he had available to him. Also, I understand that books need to be sold, but the title of this one seems unnecessarily tawdry.