No one knows anything about anaesthetics. Not even other doctors.

Most people think anaesthetists are not doctors at all. Yet anaesthetists are the medics who keep us alive, in a near-death state, when we're under the knife or desperately ill in ICU. They are the great generalists, working on every kind of medical situation, from childbirth to to major operations such as heart transplants. They send us to the world beyond consciousness and bring us safely back again.

Consultant anaesthetist Hannah Scott takes us into the operating theatre to give us a witty, behind-the-scrubs account of everything that happens while you're unconscious under anaesthetic: the jokes, the crises, their consequences, the surgeons and their egos, and the drugs and equipment that keep us alive and pain-free. Along the way she examines all that was happening in the life of the anaesthetist herself, from junior doctor to the top of her profession, and beyond.



Dr Hannah Scott was raised in rural South Devon. At university, she studied medicine with an intercalated BSc in the Politics and Economics of International Health. She went on to specialise in anaesthetics and became a consultant. Her work took her to the Bronx in New York and to Hong Kong.





After COVID, Scott stepped back from medicine to dedicate herself entirely to a creative practice in both writing and fine art. She writes about anaesthesia -- its history, science, methods, and training -- as well as the many inspiring patients she cared for during her years in the operating theatre.

In 2025, Scott received an MA from the Royal College of Art. She continues to write and produce art from her studio in Northwest London.