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Old Bones
History
Surgery's long, strange, occasionally gruesome past.
4 posts
Robert Liston and the operation with 300% mortality
The fastest knife of the pre-anaesthetic era, and the famous amputation that supposedly killed three people. The legend is irresistible. It is also, sadly,
Before the FRCS: what bone-setters knew
For centuries fracture care belonged to families of bone-setters, not surgeons. Some of what they practised survived peer review remarkably well — and one family changed surgery itself.
Trepanation: the operation that refuses to die
Humans have been drilling holes in living skulls for about 7,000 years, and a surprising number of patients survived. What the holes tell us, era by era.
The first surgical textbook, and the first honest "I don't know"
The Edwin Smith papyrus is the oldest known surgical text. Its bravest cases are marked an ailment not to be treated — medicine's first honest limit.