Robert Liston was one of the greats of the pre-anesthesia age. In those days, surgery was best performed fast, as that minimized pain and made it more likely that patients would survive the procedure.
But...The assistants tried hard to hold [a thrashing patient] but, he was too strong. In that chaos, Liston started to move so fast that he accidently cut his assistant’s fingers off and also slashed a spectator’s coat.
The spectator thought that he was hurt and died of terror on the spot. The patient and the assistant died a few days later from infections of their wounds.
This is the only surgery in known history with a 300 percent mortality rate.
It was said that Liston was able to amputate a leg in just two minutes. He once removed a 45-pound scrotal tumor in 4 minutes. Legend has it that he could amputate a limb in 28 seconds. He started every operation with the calling “Time me gentlemen”, and the spectators who were standing in the galleries timed the whole procedure.
ReplyDeleteAn axe or a guillotine can be pretty quick, too. And the doofer used by a miscreant for cutting off a finger.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
In that chaos, Liston started to move so fast that he accidently cut his assistant’s fingers off and also slashed a spectator’s coat.
ReplyDeleteListon was using muscle wired memories and instant reactions. The same ones you talked about the police using off their trigger pulls and fatal shootings, Grim.
As before, the issue I bring up is that automated commands cannot be countermanded in time since the conscious mind cannot grasp the problem until it is too late. There is no safety lock on it, when automatic expression is allowed to be given for fatality triggers.
Walking around without even being aware of, is comparable to a suicide bomb jacket. Liston at least processed and implanted the triggers and muscle wirings himself. Nobody brainwashed him that far.
Automatic muscular and spinal reflexes are merely proficiency, and a low category kind. It is not mastery and it is not something people should over train as it has limited uses.
ReplyDeleteFor military and police training, same for child soldier conditioning, I can see why that kind of methodology would be favored. High benefits over low time sunk.