Robert Liston (1794 - 1847) was
a pioneering Scottish surgeon. He was likely the best
surgeon of his day, noted for his skill and his speed in an
era prior to anesthetics. He was able to complete operations
in a matter of seconds, at a time when speed was essential
to reduce pain and improve the odds of survival of a
patient; he is said to have been able to perform the removal
of a limb in an amputation in roughly 30 seconds.
There are stories of occasions when his operations went wrong due to the speed at which he attempted them. The two most notable examples of this were when he amputated a man's testicles along with his leg by mistake and another operation where the patient died of infection, he cut off the fingers of his assistant (who also died due to infection) and slashed the coat of a spectator who died of fright. Robert Liston is the only surgeon in known history to have performed an operation with a 300% mortality rate. There is, however, apparently no precise source for these stories, so they might well just be regarded as urban legends.
Liston received his education at Edinburgh University and in 1818 became a surgeon in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He became Professor of Clinical Surgery at University College, London in 1835, and in December of 1846, he carried out the first public operation using ether anesthetic in the UK. He invented locking forceps, and the Liston Splint, used to stabilize dislocations and fractures of the femur. Source: Wikipedia