Dr. Richard Gordon, a surgeon and medical historian, calls Liston the "fastest knife in the West End." His style may have seemed careless, but in the age before anesthesia, speed was essential to ...

Robert Liston, who was given the nickname 'The fastest knife in the West End,' ran a surgery in Bond Street, Mayfair, London, from 1840 to 1846 - the year anaesthetic was first used.