John Kirkup

2007

This book is intended to explain and inform, not to dismay and shock, despite undertones of disapproval inherent in the term amputation, so deeply implanted in popular imagination, as epitomizing cruel and barbaric surgery before general anaesthesia. Yet many patients accepted this painful last resort in an endeavour to survive with three limbs rather than die with four, at a time when, we must reflect, no mechanism for effective pain relief existed.