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The Development of Modern Surgery

出版	T. Y. Crowell Company, 1968
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=IjFCAAAAIAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Less than one hundred and fifty years ago a surgical operation was a sensational even 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-know surgeon dating back to the 1830s 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. Regarded somewhat as a skilled butcher, the early surgeon was judged by the speed with which he performed on his writhing patients. Manual dexterity combined with daring, ingenuity, and the ability to make split-second decisions enabled him to overcome many of the difficulties imposed by his lack of knowledge. But the mortality rate of surgery was high, and operations were performed mostly on a life-saving basis. 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-educated technician to a highly qualified member of his profession. These were the introduction of a systemic 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 profession, Lister's discovery so revolutionized surgery that it is still considered the rock upon which the whole practice is founded. The author traces early experiments with blood transfusion, the beginnings of diagnostic aids -- surgical pathology, bacteriology, and X rays -- the rise of specialists, and the history of many commonly performed operations in the surgery of repair, of the ear, eye, brain, heart, and lung. He introduces the pioneers whose combined efforts resulted in one of the greatest forward movements in the history of human endeavor: the remarkable nineteenth-century surgeon Robert Liston; Joseph Lister, whose persistent work on antisepsis began a new era in medicine; William and Charles Mayo, whose Mayo Clinic stands as one of the greatest influences on American surgery; John P. Merrill, who with his colleagues successfully transplanted a human kidney for the first time; Howard de Bakey, who first succeeded in putting an artificial heart to use in a human being in 1966; and many others. In conclusion, the author ventures to forecast some of the advances that the future will demand. Avoiding the use of technical language, Dr. Cartwright has written a book that will be of great interest to the general reader and great value to the student and medical historian.