Surgery became medicine's first instrument of control once ether and antisepsis made it survivable. Surgeons learned what organs do by removing them, as Theodor Kocher did with the thyroid, and Charles Huggins starved prostate cancer of hormones. The same confidence produced the lobotomy, which also won a Nobel Prize. The episode ends at the knife's hard limit: it cannot reach a signal inside a cell.
Who's who
- Theodor KocherSwiss surgeon who made thyroid surgery safe; Nobel Prize 1909
- Joseph ListerBritish surgeon who introduced antiseptic surgery with carbolic acid
- William T. G. MortonBoston dentist who gave ether at the 1846 demonstration
- Charles HugginsUrologist who showed prostate cancer depends on male hormone; Nobel 1966
- William Stewart HalstedJohns Hopkins surgeon behind the radical mastectomy
- Egas MonizPortuguese neurologist who devised the leucotomy; Nobel 1949
- Walter FreemanAmerican promoter of the lobotomy and transorbital method
- Bernard FisherSurgeon who led the trial testing radical mastectomy
Where it happens
- Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston+2 more episodesSite of the 1846 ether demonstration
- Bern, SwitzerlandWhere Kocher was professor of surgery
- Johns Hopkins Hospital, BaltimoreWhere Halsted ordered rubber surgical gloves
- Glasgow, ScotlandWhere Lister first used carbolic acid
Timeline
- October 16, 1846Ether demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital
- 1867Lister publishes his antiseptic papers in The Lancet
- 1883Kocher presents cachexia strumipriva
- November 12, 1935First prefrontal leucotomy in Lisbon
- 1941Huggins and Hodges publish on prostate cancer and hormones
- December 23, 1954First successful kidney transplant
Still debated
Historians dispute who deserves credit for surgical anesthesia, whether Lister's figures proved antisepsis, and whether the 1949 Nobel Prize for the lobotomy should stand. Counts of lobotomies are estimates, and the fall from favor of the operation has several explanations.