Robert Liston was the great operator of pre-anaesthetic London: tall, forceful, and fast enough that students came to watch him work against the clock. In a world where the patient was awake and held down, speed was not ornament but mercy.
On 21 December 1846, at University College Hospital, Liston amputated Frederick Churchill's leg under ether and announced that the American vapour beat mesmerism hollow. The man who embodied heroic speed had just demonstrated why surgery no longer had to live by it.