History of surgery, prominent surgeons

1. Big picture

The history of surgery is the story of how surgery changed from a manual craft into a safe scientific clinical discipline. For the oral exam, the examiner does not want random dates only. They want you to understand which discoveries made modern surgery possible.

The key idea:

Ancient wound care
→ anatomical knowledge
→ control of bleeding
→ anesthesia
→ antisepsis/asepsis
→ blood transfusion
→ antibiotics
→ imaging and endoscopy
→ intensive care and minimally invasive surgery
→ modern evidence-based, safe, specialized surgery

Modern surgery became possible only when five major problems were solved:

| Problem | Historical solution