The development of modern surgery from 1830

Less than one hundred and fifty years ago a surgical operation was a sensational event often attended by several hundred curious onlookers. Every surgeon of the early nineteenth century was a pioneer. With no diagrams to guide his operations, no anaesthesia. to kill pain, and no knowledge of the prevention let alone cause of infection, he tackled almost every kind of operation in this specialized field. The casebook of one well-known surgeon dating back to the 1830’s includes records of amputations, operations for breast cancer, circumcisions, the tying of a subclavian artery for the first time in history, and the removal of a plum stone by excision from the trachea of a nine year old girl.
In the development of Modern Surgery the author describes the dramatic steps by which the rare, dangerous, and agonizingly painful operations of the early nineteenth century evolved into the comparatively safe and painless surgery of today. The story begins with the three major changes that transformed the status of the surgeon from that of an ill-edu-cated technician to a highly qualified member of his profession. These were the introduction of a systematic education for the surgeon, the development of anaesthesia, and Joseph Lister’s discovery of antisepsis, a process by which bacteria are prevented from entering the open wound. Slow to be accepted by the medical profession, Lister’s discovery so revolutionized surgery that it is still considered the rock upon which the whole practice is founded.