Overview

Surgery has a long history in the healing arts. Its history dates back thousands of years to the great seats of early civilization in Athens, Rome, and Alexandria. However, amputations and invasive wound-healing procedures can even be traced to Upper Paleolithic peoples living tens of thousands of years ago, who, with apparently considerable knowledge about human anatomy, practiced bone-setting as well as minor surgical procedures.

The years between 1700 and 1799 stand out as important to medical history and surgical advancement because surgeons were willing—as must have been the patients—to attempt amputations as well as complicated and often heroic surgeries on major organs of the body, all without benefit of anesthesia, which did not come along until the nineteenth century. Eighteenth-century surgeons prided themselves on fast amputations, as well as procedures such as removing bladder stones, cancers, and even cataracts from...