The History of Surgery - Essay Example

The association of human talents in the development of surgical techniques to modern sophistication has been utterly inseparable. Initial surgical operations occurred long before people had substantial knowledge of how the body works. Evidence of trephination (a little exposure of the brain through scrapping of the skull) goes back to the Neolithic era (Brothwell, 126). The era of civilization saw Egyptians, the Chinese, Indians and the Greeks perform varied surgical operations such as stitching minor wounds to the complex C-section. The exact nature of the success of these procedures goes beyond the scope of this survey. Before the industrial revolution, bleeding, pain and infection plagued the medical profession with dire consequences. As such, overcoming these key, principal obstacles remained focal points of the conscious transformation of surgery from a ‘risky art’ into an effective discipline guided by scientific principles. Until the discovery of anaesthetics in the 1840s and so to the subsequent dev elopement of antiseptic techniques beginning from 1867 by John Lister, surgery was an adventurous experience built upon trial and painful error. Depending on the level of knowledge then, the application of anaesthetic kind of principles to ease the pain was probably equivalent to getting the patient to take a bottle of scotch before the actual operation (Bynum, 75-76). Bleeding due to surgical cuts was remedied by cauterization (sealing of blood vessels with extreme heat via thick, small branded iron) (Cruce, 56). As painful as it was, the method worked, but with higher prospects of causing additional problems of tissue destruction of the affected area. Under such circumstances, cleanliness was the only sure way to keep infections at bay. To the ancient Greeks, bathing wounds with wine/alcohol was another preventive measure against infections (Risse, 56). Notably, a lack of understanding of the inner operative structures was evident. Building on individual inventions and innovations without properly cultivated research, improvements in the advanced profession in existence today characterized an abundance of desperate measures by the early practitioners to solve patient problems.