The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Surgery

This handbook covers the technical, social and cultural history of surgery. It reflects the state of the art and suggests directions for future research. It discusses what is different and specific about the history of surgery - a manual activity with a direct impact on the patient’s body. The individual entries in the handbook function as starting points for anyone who wants to obtain up-to-date information about an area in the history of surgery for purposes of research or for general orientation. Written by 26 experts from 6 countries, the chapters discuss the essential topics of the field (such as anaesthesia, wound infection, instruments, specialization), specific domains areas (for example, cancer surgery, transplants, animals, war), but also innovative themes (women, popular culture, nursing, clinical trials) and make connections to other areas of historical research (such as the history of emotions, art, architecture, colonial history). 

Chapters 16 and 18 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

Chapter 1: Introduction: What is Special About the History of Surgery?; Thomas Schlich.- Periods and Topics.- Chapter 2: Surgery and its Histories: Purposes and Contexts; Christopher Lawrence.- Chapter 3: Pre-Modern Surgery: Wounds, Words, and the Paradox of "Tradition"; Faith Wallis.- Chapter 4: Medicalizing the Surgical Trade, 1650-1820: Workers, Knowledge and Economy; Christelle Rabier.- Chapter 5: Surgery Becomes a Specialty: Professional Boundaries and Surgery; Peter Kernahan.- Chapter 6: Between Human and Veterinary Medicine: The History of Animals and Surgery; Abigail Woods.- Chapter 7: Women in Surgery: Patients and Practitioners; Claire Brock.- Chapter 8: Nursing and Surgery: Professionalisation, Education and Innovation; Rosemary Wall and Christine E. Hallett.- Chapter 9: Opening the Abdomen: The Expansion of Surgery; Sally Frampton.- Chapter 10: Surgery and Anaesthesia: Revolutions in Practice; Stephanie J Snow.- Chapter 11: The History of Surgical Wound Infection: Revolution or Evolution?; Michael Worboys.- Chapter 12: Surgical Instruments: History and Historiography; Claire Jones.- Links.- Chapter 13: Surgery and Architecture: Spaces for Operating; Annmarie Adams.- Chapter 14: Visualizing Surgery: Surgeons’ Use of Images, 1600–present; Harriet Palfreyman and Christelle Rabier.- Chapter 15: Art and Surgery: The Expert Hands of Artists and Surgeons; Mary Hunter.- Chapter 16: Surgery and Emotion: The Era before Anaesthesia; Michael Brown.- Chapter 17: Surgery and Popular Culture: Situating the Surgeon and the Surgical Experience in Popular Media; Susan E. Lederer.- Chapter 18: Surgery, Imperial Rule and Colonial Societies (1800-1930): Technical, Institutional and Social Histories; Kieran Fitzpatrick.- Chapter 19: Surgery and War: The Discussions About the Usefulness of War for Medical Progress; Leo van Bergen.- Areas and Technologies.- Chapter 20: Transplantation Surgery: Organ Replacement Between Reductionism and Systemic Approaches; Sibylle Obrecht.- Chapter 21: Opening the Skull: Neurosurgery as a Case Study of Surgical Specialisation; Delia Gavrus.- Chapter 22: Cancer: Radical Surgery and the Patient; David Cantor.- Chapter 23: Surgery and Clinical Trials: The History and Controversies of Surgical Evidence; David Jones.- Chapter 24: A Revolution through the Keyhole: Technology, Innovation, and the Rise of Minimally Invasive Surgery;Nicholas Whitfield.- Chapter 25: Bariatric and Cosmetic Surgery: Shifting Rationales in Contemporary Surgical Practices; Jean-Philippe Gendron.

Thomas Schlich, MD, is James McGill Professor in the History of Medicine at the Department Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University, Canada, and has a double qualification as physician and historian. His research interests include the history of modern medicine and science from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. He has previously written books on transplantation, and on operative fracture care as a domain where surgery, science, and industry come together. He is currently working on a monograph about the emergence of modern surgery, 1800-1914.