Bare-knuckle Surgeon

Incompetent surgeons, corrupt royal colleges, nepotism and quackery. The medical establishment - a small coterie of self-serving doctors - went unchallenged.

Until 1823, when a young surgeon, son of a farmer, who'd survived being at sea, mastered bare-knuckle fighting, and escaped assassination, did what no doctor had dared.

Risking ruin, Thomas Wakley established The Lancet, an uncompromising radical journal which scandalized the establishment and initiated modern health care.

Why him? What m...