Agony and Advancement

In the Age of Enlightenment, increasing emphasis on scientific practice lead to improvements to existing operations and the development of many new techniques. These included developments in cutting for the stone, trephining, eye surgery and reconstructive surgery and the emergence of surgery on the circulatory system. And yet, without anaesthesia, these operations were still performed on conscious patients and surgery continued to be a bloody and agonising experience for the patients. A talk on the rise of scientific surgery, as it was performed by some of the greatest surgeons of the enlightenment, men whose personal and professional ambitions and energy shaped 18th century surgery, including William Cheselden, Percival Pott and the great John Hunter himself, and of the reality of surgery in the Georgian age.