Belly-Rippers, Surgical Innovation and the Ovariotomy Controversy

Belly-Rippers, Surgical Innovation and the Ovariotomy Controversy
Author: Sally Frampton
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2018-12-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319789341

This open access book looks at the dramatic history of ovariotomy, an operation to remove ovarian tumours first practiced in the early nineteenth century. Bold and daring, surgeons who performed it claimed to be initiating a new era of surgery by opening the abdomen. Ovariotomy soon occupied a complex position within medicine and society, as an operation which symbolised surgical progress, while also remaining at the boundaries of ethical acceptability. This book traces the operation’s innovation, from its roots in eighteenth-century pathology, through the denouncement of those who performed it as ‘belly-rippers’, to its rapid uptake in the 1880s, when ovariotomists were accused of over-operating. Throughout the century, the operation was never a hair’s breadth from controversy.

The Scientific Revolution in Victorian Medicine

The Scientific Revolution in Victorian Medicine
Author: A.J. Youngson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2018-12-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429670664

Originally published 1979 The Scientific Revolution in Victorian Medicine looks at the discovery of inhalation anaesthesia in 1846, and how it began a new era in surgery. The book looks at James Young Simpson’s demonstration of the value of chloroform as an anaesthetic, and how many surgeons quickly adopted it. The book also looks at the dangers of chloroform if mishandled and only after considerable controversy and numerous fatalities was its use thoroughly understood and established. Ten years later an even more lengthy struggle began over antiseptic surgery. The ‘germ’ theory, on which Lister’s technique was founded had few adherents among British surgeons, and his methods were deemed absurdly complicated. He was opposed and sometimes ridiculed by the most distinguished men in the profession, including Simpson. Over ten years were required to persuade the majority of British surgeons that Lister did actually achieve the results which he claimed and that it was possible for a competent surgeon to do equally well, if only he would take the trouble. This book shows that a great many factors interacted in delaying the introduction of these new ideas. The almost wholly unscientific nature of British medical education and practice before 1860 or 1870, detailed in the first chapter, was one factor; rivalry and distrust between London and Scotland was another. Genuine disadvantages in the new methods were not unimportant either, while personal animosities failure to face the facts, and fear of the unknowable consequences of change all played a significant part.

Advances in Experimental Surgery

Advances in Experimental Surgery
Author: Huifang Chen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-11
Genre: Surgery, Experimental
ISBN: 9781536127737

Experimental surgery is an important link for the development in clinical surgery, research and teaching. Experimental surgery was part of the most important surgical discoveries in the past century. Since 1901 nine Nobel Prizes have been awarded to the pioneers had remarkable achievements in the basic or practical surgery. In recent 20 years, experimental surgery has achieved new advances, like laparoscopic and robotic surgery, tissue engineering, and gene therapy which are widely applied in clinic surgery. The present book covers wide experimental surgery in preclinical research models subdivided in two volumes. Volume I introduces surgical basic notions, techniques, and different surgical models involved in basic experimental surgery and review the biomechanical models, ischemia/reperfusion injury models, repair and regeneration models, and organ and tissue transplantation models, respectively. Volume II introduces several specific experimental models such as laparoscopic and bariatric experimental surgical models. The second volume also introduces graft-versus-host disease, and other experimental models. Review the advances and development of recent techniques such as tissue engineering, organ preservation, wound healing and scarring, gene therapy and robotic surgery. The book documents the enormous volume of knowledge we have acquired in the field of experimental surgery. In this book, we have invited experts from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, China, Japan, Korea, UK, Sweden, Netherland, Hungary and Turkey to contribute 36 chapters in the fields of their expertise. These two volumes are the compilation of basic experimental surgery and updated advances of new development in this field that will be invaluable to surgeons, residents, graduate students, surgical researchers, physicians, immunologists, veterinarians and nurses in surgery.

A Calculus of Suffering

A Calculus of Suffering
Author: Martin S. Pernick
Publisher:
Total Pages: 421
Release: 1985
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780231051866

Analyzes the impact of anesthesia on nineteenth-century medicine, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of anesthesia, and explains how rules for its use were developed