Paging Dr. Robot

When Pier Giu­lianotti was a medi­cal student, he hated the sight of blood. In the mid-seventies, he travelled from his native Italy to Spain, on a fellowship, and watched a lung resection. “I nearly fainted,” he recalled recently. “I had to sit down in the corner.” The next day, he attended a plastic-surgery procedure. “Something more gentle,” he told himself.