The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Surgery

by Thomas Schlich (Editor)

Overview

This handbook covers the technical, social and cultural history of surgery. It reflects the state of the art and suggests directions for future research. It discusses what is different and specific about the history of surgery - a manual activity with a direct impact on the patient’s body. The individual entries in the handbook function as starting points for anyone who wants to obtain up-to-date information about an area in the history of surgery for purposes of research or for general orientation. Written by 26 experts from 6 countries, the chapters discuss the essential topics of the field (such as anaesthesia, wound infection, instruments, specialization), specific domains areas (for example, cancer surgery, transplants, animals, war), but also innovative themes (women, popular culture, nursing, clinical trials) and make connections to other areas of historical research (such as the history of emotions, art, architecture, colonial history). 

Chapters 16 and 18 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349952601
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	12/12/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	578
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Thomas Schlich, MD, is James McGill Professor in the History of Medicine at the Department Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University, Canada, and has a double qualification as physician and historian. His research interests include the history of modern medicine and science from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. He has previously written books on transplantation, and on operative fracture care as a domain where surgery, science, and industry come together. He is currently working on a monograph about the emergence of modern surgery, 1800-1914.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction: What is Special About the History of Surgery?; Thomas Schlich.- Periods and Topics.- Chapter 2: Surgery and its Histories: Purposes and Contexts; Christopher Lawrence.- Chapter 3: Pre-Modern Surgery: Wounds, Words, and the Paradox of "Tradition"; Faith Wallis.- Chapter 4: Medicalizing the Surgical Trade, 1650-1820: Workers, Knowledge and Economy; Christelle Rabier.- Chapter 5: Surgery Becomes a Specialty: Professional Boundaries and Surgery; Peter Kernahan.- Chapter 6: Between Human and Veterinary Medicine: The History of Animals and Surgery; Abigail Woods.- Chapter 7: Women in Surgery: Patients and Practitioners; Claire Brock.- Chapter 8: Nursing and Surgery: Professionalisation, Education and Innovation; Rosemary Wall and Christine E. Hallett.- Chapter 9: Opening the Abdomen: The Expansion of Surgery; Sally Frampton.- Chapter 10: Surgery and Anaesthesia: Revolutions in Practice; Stephanie J Snow.- Chapter 11: The History of Surgical Wound Infection: Revolution or Evolution?; Michael Worboys.- Chapter 12: Surgical Instruments: History and Historiography; Claire Jones.- Links.- Chapter 13: Surgery and Architecture: Spaces for Operating; Annmarie Adams.- Chapter 14: Visualizing Surgery: Surgeons’ Use of Images, 1600–present; Harriet Palfreyman and Christelle Rabier.- Chapter 15: Art and Surgery: The Expert Hands of Artists and Surgeons; Mary Hunter.- Chapter 16: Surgery and Emotion: The Era before Anaesthesia; Michael Brown.- Chapter 17: Surgery and Popular Culture: Situating the Surgeon and the Surgical Experience in Popular Media; Susan E. Lederer.- Chapter 18: Surgery, Imperial Rule and Colonial Societies (1800-1930): Technical, Institutional and Social Histories; Kieran Fitzpatrick.- Chapter 19: Surgery and War: The Discussions About the Usefulness of War for Medical Progress; Leo van Bergen.- Areas and Technologies.- Chapter 20: Transplantation Surgery: Organ Replacement Between Reductionism and Systemic Approaches; Sibylle Obrecht.- Chapter 21: Opening the Skull: Neurosurgery as a Case Study of Surgical Specialisation; Delia Gavrus.- Chapter 22: Cancer: Radical Surgery and the Patient; David Cantor.- Chapter 23: Surgery and Clinical Trials: The History and Controversies of Surgical Evidence; David Jones.- Chapter 24: A Revolution through the Keyhole: Technology, Innovation, and the Rise of Minimally Invasive Surgery;Nicholas Whitfield.- Chapter 25: Bariatric and Cosmetic Surgery: Shifting Rationales in Contemporary Surgical Practices; Jean-Philippe Gendron.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This handbook represents a coming of age for the history of surgery. Scholarship in the field has grown rapidly in recent years. Now we have a well-organized volume to map out its areas of research with special attention to the established historiography. Individual chapters are of a consistently high quality, and the work as a whole has a thoughtful coherence, with multiple chapters developing shared themes and useful crosstalk among contributors.” (Christopher Crenner, Robert Hudson and Ralph Major Professor, University of Kansas, USA)

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Alain Touwaide, PhD (Ronin Institute)
Description: This broad history of surgery proceeds along three different, yet complementary axes: periods and topics; what the book calls "links," that is, the connection of surgery to several forms of communication and arts; and specialized surgery. There are as many authors as chapters and most authors are professional historians of medicine.
Purpose: Surgery is approached as a specialized knowledge, as a technology, and as a social fact. The three axes used to reconstruct the history of surgery intersect to reflect the multifaceted reality of surgery, including, for example, the impact of technology on surgical practice. None of the chapters offers a global vision of the history of surgery, but their sum allows for such a reconstruction, which is left to the reader.
Audience: This is a book for consultation, study, or research; not a book to read cover to cover, but a book to be worked on. Given the multiplicity of the descriptors and approaches, it will be used by a wide range of readers, from surgeons to historians of the hospital, for example, or even the PR service of a hospital since the inter-relation between surgery and society is part of the inquiry here. All readers will find material relating to their own specialty and interests, and they might get out of their field of specialization to discover aspects of surgery they might not be initially interested in. This is a collection of information rather than a linear history.
Features: The first part on periods and topics goes through the history of surgery in three periods (premodern, 1650-1820, and professionalization) and then zooms in on special topics such as veterinary surgery, women and surgery, nursing, instruments with their history and historiography. The second part focuses on surgery and communication/connections and the arts. It goes from the history of the surgical locus (architecture) to the representation of surgeons and surgery in the media, including the link of surgery to state institutions and war, particularly the possible impact of war surgery on surgical knowledge and technique. The third and final part is about areas of specialization, such as transplantation, neurosurgery, cancer, and cosmetic surgery, among others. Chapters are divided in subsections identified by clear titles and the text includes references to notes (all grouped at the end of the chapters) together with a list of readings for further explorations. A substantial index ends the book.
Assessment: Rather than a linear history of surgery from prehistorical trephination to present-day noninvasive laparoscopy, this multiauthored book aims to reflect the complexity of surgery and reading its history. It certainly is not an easy book for casual reading, but rather a conceptual sum of information that adheres as closely as possible to the evolution of medicohistorical inquiry and thinking, and the complexity of the subject under analysis, surgery.

Doody's Review Service

Surgery is approached as a specialized knowledge, as a technology, and as a social fact. … it will be used by a wide range of readers, from surgeons to historians of the hospital … . Chapters are divided in subsections identified by clear titles and the text includes references to notes (all grouped at the end of the chapters) together with a list of readings for further explorations. A substantial index ends the book.” (Alain Touwaide, Doody's Book Reviews, October, 2018)

“The essays range from antiquity to today’s bariatric, cosmetic and minimal access surgery, and are widely researched, clearly written and authoritative, backed up by extensive bibliographies. This is an important contribution to the subject of surgical history. It is not light reading, but it will be a valuable source book to anyone wishing to research in depth into any of its specialist topics.” (Harold Ellis, British Journal of Hospital Medicine, Vol. 79 (3), March, 2018)

From the Publisher