Lindsey Fitzharris

Lindsey Fitzharris is an American medical historian , author , and television host specializing in the history of medicine and surgery , particularly the evolution of surgical practices in the 19th and 20th centuries. She holds a PhD in the history of science , medicine , and technology from the University of Oxford , where she completed her doctorate, and served as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine.

Fitzharris gained prominence with her debut book, The Butchering Art : Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine (2017), a New York Times bestseller that chronicles the life of surgeon Joseph Lister and the introduction of antiseptic surgery , which has been translated into over 20 languages. The book won the PEN/ E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize and the Wolfson History Prize . Her second major work, The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I (2022), also a New York Times bestseller, explores the pioneering plastic surgery efforts of Harold Gillies during the war and debuted at number four on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. She has contributed articles to prestigious outlets including The Wall Street Journal , Scientific American , The Guardian , The Lancet , and New Scientist .

In addition to her writing, Fitzharris is the creator of the blog The Chirurgeon's Apprentice , which examines historical medical practices, and hosts the YouTube series Under the Knife , amassing over 500,000 followers across social media platforms through her curated content on medical history . She hosted the Smithsonian Channel series The Curious Life and Death of... (2021), a six-part documentary exploring historical medical mysteries and innovations. Fitzharris continues to develop television projects with production companies and is authoring an upcoming book, Sleuth-Hound , on Victorian forensics, having published her first children's book, Dead Ends!: Flukes, Flops & Failures That Sparked Medical Marvels (2025), illustrated by her husband, Adrian Teal.

Lindsey Fitzharris was born in 1982 in Chicago , Illinois .

Raised in the nearby suburb of Mount Prospect, Fitzharris experienced an upbringing rich in local historical influences, particularly through family activities that exposed her to themes of mortality and the past. She often accompanied her grandmother on "cemetery runs," exploring mausoleums and engaging in ghost hunts, which fostered an early fascination with death and history. A pivotal childhood moment occurred at age eight, when she touched the embalmed body of her great-aunt during a viewing, igniting her curiosity about the human body's preservation and the rituals surrounding it. During high school at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect, where she participated in the marching band , these interests began to coalesce around broader historical narratives, though her formal engagement with medical history would soon follow.

Fitzharris's initial interest in medical history was sparked during her early college years, building on her longstanding intrigue with mortality. This deepened significantly in 2002 while studying abroad at Oxford University, where she was introduced to the history of science by Professor Robert Fox; this encounter marked her first profound immersion in the field and set the course for her academic pursuits.

Lindsey Fitzharris completed her undergraduate education in the United States, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2004. Prior to this, in 2002, she participated in a study abroad program at the University of Oxford , where she developed an early interest in the history of science and medicine under the guidance of Professor Robert Fox.