The brief and strange history of mesmerism and surgery
Tyler B. Rouse Stratford, Ontario, Canada A Practitioner of Mesmerism using Animal Magnetism Wood engraving. Mesmer, Franz Anton 1734-1815. Wellcome Images, Wikimedia Commons The modern era of surgery is often thought to have begun with the introduction of ether, allowing surgeons to operate on insensible patients, and do more than ever before. However, before […]
Campbell de Morgan (1811-1876)
Bust of Campbell De Morgan, presented to the Middlesex Hospital by John Graham Lough Described as a man of great accomplishment and unusual ability, Campbell de Morgan was a surgeon and a professor at the Middlesex Hospital in London. His main interest was neoplasia, and he participated in the debate on whether cancer arises locally […]
Sir Astley Cooper: the surgeon’s surgeon
Astley Cooper, one of the most famous surgeons of his time, was born in Norfolk in 1768. He began his studies in anatomy at the age of sixteen at St. Thomas’ Hospital, attended the lectures of the great surgeon and anatomist John Hunter, and was appointed at Guy’s Hospital as demonstrator in anatomy in 1789 and […]
The art of surgery: ‘surgical theatrics’ on the surgeon’s stage
Cynthia J. Avila Chicago, Illinois, USA Thomas Eakins. The Agnew Clinic. 1889. Oil on canvas, 84 3/8 in x 118 1/8 in, John Morgan Building at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sorry indeed should I be, to sport with the life of a fellow-creature who might repose a confidence either in my surgical […]
Loyal Davis, legendary neurosurgeon (1896-1982)
For more than thirty years, in an era less politically correct than ours, Dr. Loyal Davis reigned supreme as chief of surgery at the Northwestern University medical school in Chicago. He retired in 1963, but stories about him persisted as lively subjects of conversation and amusement, to be told with relish at meetings and […]
Karl A. Meyer (1888-1972)
For over half a century, Dr. Karl Meyer was the absolute ruler of what under his command became the largest public hospital in the United States, the Cook County Hospital in Chicago. He interned there in 1908, joined its staff as attending surgeon in 1918, and at the age of 28 was appointed hospital superintendent. […]
Christian Fenger (1840-1902)
Danish born Christian Fenger practiced pathology and surgery in Chicago over a century ago and made such an impact on education that a public school in his adopted city is still named after him. As a young man he studied medicine in Copenhagen, completed his internship there, served in the 1865 war against Germany, and […]
William Stewart Halsted (1852-1920)
One of the greatest early American surgeons and one of the “big four” founders of the John Hopkins Medical School faculty, William Halsted was a curious personality, a loner and egomaniac recluse, aristocrat in his breeding, touchy and sharp tongued, an advocate of precision who had little interest in private practice and spent his life […]
Pursuit of immortality: Dr. Amosov
Olena Lupalo Bursa, Turkey Portrait of Nikolai Amosov. Photo by L. Sherstennikov. In 1962, after his visit to the USA, heart surgeon Nikolai Amosov (1913-2002) became obsessed by artificial heart valves. There were no opportunities for this in the Soviet Union – neither information nor technology. Amosov sewed his first cusp of the artificial […]
Impostor syndrome: Richard Selzer’s life of doubt
Mahala Yates Stripling Fort Worth, Texas, United States Richard Selzer in the two-act play The Doctor Stories “I am called by the name of Chekhov. Each time I hear it, I blush and cringe. He had true genius; I just do the best I can. There is an enormous difference. I do believe it is […]