How did a decision made in the operating theatre spark hundreds of conspiracy theories about JFK?\nHow did a backstage joke prove fatal to world-famous escape artist Harry Houdini?\nHow did Queen Victoria change the course of surgical history?

Through dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today\'s sterile, high-tech operating theatres, surgeon Arnold van de Laar uses his experience and expertise to tell an incisive history of the past, present and future of surgery.\nFrom the dark centuries of bloodletting and of amputations without anaesthetic to today\'s sterile, high-tech operating theatres, Under the Knife is both a rich cultural history, and a modern anatomy class for us all.