Tag: Surgery
-
The ghost in the steel: What we lose when old instruments disappear
Yogesh SalphaleChandrapur, India In the modern operating theater, the soundtrack is one of high-frequency whines and digital pings. We have entered the era of the “power-driven” surgeon, where battery-operated drills, robotic arms, and navigated arrays have turned the once visceral act of orthopedics into a clean, almost detached geometry. But as I look at the…
-
On quadruple amputations
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Recently I read “How Losing My Limbs Turned Me into a Different Kind of Cook.”1 It is the story of Yewande Komolafe, whose two-decade career as a cook came to an abrupt end when a catastrophic sickle cell crisis led to bilateral below-the-knee and upper limb amputations. Cooking was at one…
-
Jacobus Rau: Surgical innovator, renowned lithotomist, and educator at Leiden
Johann Jakob Rau, latinized to Johannes, was one of the most influential surgical innovators of early modern Europe, best known for transforming the treatment of urinary bladder stones through his lateral lithotomy technique. Born in 1668 in Baden-Baden, he was the son of wine merchant Johannes and Magdalena Muller. His early exposure to medicine came…
-
Lorenz Heister, German surgeon
Lorenz Heister (or Laurentius Heister in his Latin works) was a prominent German general, eye surgeon, and professor of anatomy and surgery at the University of Altdorf, Germany. Heister contributed significantly to surgical practice, particularly through his influential surgical books, which hold a place in medical literature comparable to that of Ambroise Paré. Born to…
-
Sir Benjamin Brodie
JMS PearceHull, England Benjamin Collins Brodie (1783–1862) was born in Winterslow, near Salisbury. His father, Peter Bellinger Brodie, was the local rector. Having graduated from Worcester College, Oxford, he chose to educate Benjamin at home since he was unable to meet the fees of the public schools. Choosing medicine as his career, Benjamin ventured to…
-
Do machines dream of the human hand?
Elie NajjarNottingham, United Kingdom Imagine this: a machine that can see your heartbeat, read your spine, and calculate your risk of death better than your doctor can. Now ask yourself: does it understand you? Does it care if you live or die? The question is not whether machines will replace us, but something more unsettling:…
-
A hole in the head and a world of skill
Richard de GrijsSydney, Australia In the dim confines of a ship’s sickbay during the golden age of piracy, the sound of waves might have been interrupted by the rasp and twist of a surgical drill biting into bone. Trepanning—the act of boring into the skull to relieve the pressure on the brain following head trauma—was…
-
Sir James Paget
JMS PearceHull, England James Paget (1814–1899) is remembered for his original accounts of “osteitis deformans,” universally known as Paget’s disease of bone,1 and for his original description of Paget’s disease of the nipple, a sign of intraductal carcinoma.2 He made extensive contributions to pathology3 and to surgery.4 As a student at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, he was…