Pioneers of Surgery: A Brutal Craft
(Part I)
Key Notes
Important People to Note from Video
• Pare (French surgeon used boiling oil on amputated limbs)
• McDowell (1809-removed a 15 lb tumor on a women’s ovary
w/no anaesthesia)
• Humphrey Davy (nitrous oxide) called in “Laughing gas”
• Morton (used ether & discovered how it eliminated pain)
• Warren (1846-removed a cyst in the neck using ether)
• Liston (hold the leg with one hand & amputate with the other)
• Simpson (used chloroform for simple surgeries)
• Scion (took advantage of ether & the longer time to operate)
• Lister (1865-child’s broken leg, applied phenol, saved the leg)
• Pasteur (sugg. use of carbolic on infected wounds)
• Halsted (Sprayed carbolic while operating, began to use gloves)
• Koch (bacteria from surgeon’s hands was transferred to patients
and began the process of antisepsis -sugg. boiling instruments.
• Lower (1600’s - 1st blood transfusion with lamb
• Landsteiner (sep. blood groups-more successful transfusions)
• Cushing (Brain tumors, electro-cautery, no talking)
Important People to Note from Video
• Three Barriers:
– Pain (anaesthetic agents)
– Blood loss - Shock (sawdust, hot irons, clamps )
– Infection (lognum, carbolic acid, phenol, boiling, autoclave, antibacterial
gases, and soaking in chemicals)
• Anaesthesia: (alcohol, hypnotism, Knock-out punch)
– Ether
– Chloroform
– Nitrous Oxide
• Other Notes:
– Quickest was best (amputation record: 28 sec.)- Liston
– Antisepsis (use of phenol, carbolic acid)
– Asepsis (*setting up a sterile field)
– 1st blood transfusion: with an animal (lamb) – Lower (1600)
– 1st human blood transfusion (1818)
– Shock (Stonewall Jackson’s symptoms: pale, gasping for air, etc.
– Sodium citrate was used to prevent blood from clotting (transport)
– Stalin (Russia) used corpses for blood transfusion