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211 7 Beyond the surgery boundaries: doctors’ organisations and activist medics Migrant South Asian GPs, by the very nature of their roles, became embedded in communities. GPs came in contact with a cross-section of the local population at regular intervals, often over long periods of time. They benefited from a great deal of professional autonomy in addition to having substantial amounts of social capital. They were therefore in a position to shape the social and political environment in which they found themselves. Doctors’ interviews and archives provide
A new kind of surgery for a new kind of war Chapter 3 A new kind of surgery for a new kind of war: gunshot wounds and their treatment in the British Civil Wars Stephen M. Rutherford T his chapter aims to evaluate the validity of the medical practice of the early modern military surgeon. Significant progress has been made, in recent years, in researching the social impact of medicine in the post-Renaissance period. Considerable attention has been paid to the role and social status of medical practitioners,1 the impact of medical care for the dying,2 the role
This book explores seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain’s experiences with and responses to the surgical reconstruction of the nose, and the concerns and possibilities raised by the idea of ‘nose transplants’ in this period. Challenging histories of plastic surgery that posit a complete disappearance of Gaspare Tagliacozzi’s reconstructive operation after his death in 1599, the book traces the actual extent of this knowledge within the medical community in order to uncover why such a procedure was anathema to early modern British culture. Medical knowledge of Tagliacozzi’s autograft rhinoplasty was overtaken by a spurious story, widely related in contemporary literature, that the nose would be constructed from flesh purchased from a social inferior, and would die with the vendor. The volume therefore explores this narrative in detail for its role in the procedure’s stigmatisation, its engagement with the doctrine of medical sympathy, and its attempt to commoditise living human flesh. Utilising medical research and book histories alongside literary criticism, the project historicises key modern questions about the commodification and limits of the human body, the impact of popular culture on medical practice, and the ethical connotations of bodily modification as response to stigma.
Historians of the British Civil Wars are increasingly taking notice of these bloody conflicts as a critical event in the welfare history of Europe. This volume will examine the human costs of the conflict and the ways in which they left lasting physical and mental scars after the cessation of armed hostilities. Its essays examine the effectiveness of medical care and the capacity of the British peoples to endure these traumatic events. During these wars, the Long Parliament’s concern for the ‘commonweal’ led to centralised care for those who had suffered ‘in the State’s service’, including improved medical treatment, permanent military hospitals, and a national pension scheme, that for the first time included widows and orphans. This signified a novel acceptance of the State’s duty of care to its servicemen and their families. These essays explore these developments from a variety of new angles, drawing upon the insights shared at the inaugural conference of the National Civil War Centre in August 2015. This book reaches out to new audiences for military history, broadening its remit and extending its methodological reach.
(‘On the surgery of mutilations through grafting’, (Venice: 1597)). Tagliacozzi's rhinoplasty procedure lifted a flap of skin from the patient's upper arm to reconstruct the nose, and is now so well known it forms the logo of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, with Tagliacozzi heralded as the ‘father’ of plastic surgery. But histories of plastic surgery maintain that after Tagliacozzi's death his procedure disappeared from medical knowledge for the following two centuries. This is incorrect. It is likely that Tagliacozzi's procedure was never practised in
In this chapter, I discuss the history of various technologies for infection control in surgical operations. My account starts with the uptake of surgical gloves by practitioners in the late nineteenth century, which was a protracted process, and explains the relative disinterest of many surgeons in this particular technology by situating it in the context of other contemporary strategies of infection control. Exploring such alternative innovations shows that technological change in surgery and infection control does not happen in a vacuum. There are always
’t sociable.’ 97 In short, no one knew quite what to do with him. Dominique’s father thought that his son’s condition was inborn and that, unless corrective brain surgery became possible, there was nothing to be done. His mother was unsure, but reluctantly agreed to Dolto’s suggestion of further psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Before seeing Dominique, Dolto spent some time talking to his mother alone, in which she ran through the wider family history. Madame Bel (Dolto did not provide a first name) had spent an unhappy
, the son of a satin weaver. 4 He rose to become a highly respected surgeon whose reputation spread throughout Europe and beyond, today appearing frequently on everything from medical history blogs and the television quiz show QI to the insignia of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons. Tagliacozzi studied and then taught at the University of Bologna, where he introduced many of his students to his rhinoplasty method. The university held his plastic surgery work in such high esteem that they erected a statue to him in their anatomy theatre in 1640 – holding
In the 1900–1935 period, surgical success depended not only on the surgeon’s operative skill in the face of difficult challenges during surgery, but also on the prevention of sepsis. Pre- and post-operative care was mainly directed at preventing or managing infection, and was the relatively new professional sphere of the nurse. Training nurses to be skilled in surgical nursing was therefore vital to both the patient’s recovery and the surgeon’s success. Central to sepsis was the presence of pus; a substance laden with fears of gangrene and death, and morally
comes In 1687 and 1696, an English translation of book two of De curtorum chirurgia was published in London by ‘a Member of the College of Physicians’. Chirurgorum comes has been surprisingly under-used by historians of plastic surgery and other medical fields, despite the fact that it is now available in a large number of university libraries in the original, and many more through microfilm and Early English Books Online (EEBO). Most library catalogues even include Tagliacozzi as one of the text's authors. The authors of an article published in The Lancet of