By Marc Tamer, Year 11
Throughout the past, the art of Surgery has evolved from very humble beginnings in Neolithic times. We have very early records of surgery dating back to the Stone Age. In this article, we will take a deep dive into the past of surgery covering the constantly evolving timeline of the art of Surgery.
The First Records of Surgery
Very recently, Archeologists and Researchers from Indonesia and Australia were researching and excavating a cave in Borneo: “Liang Tebo.” In this cave, researchers discovered a skeleton dating back 31,000 years. What was intriguing is that this Skeleton had a very clean and well-amputated left leg, which had healed successfully. The fact that this bone healed after the surgery not only shows us that the surgery was a great success but also shows us that the patient had survived several years after the surgery. This reveals that in the Stone Age, humans had a much better understanding of the human body than we thought. To even think of this, is intriguing. Medical specialists were able to confirm that due to the technique used to amputate the leg this amputation was indeed surgically performed by somebody who had a lot of experience and skill. This is only the first record of Surgery we have, but this does not mean it is the first surgery performed. It may have been possible that there had been surgery many years before that.
The Code of Hammurabi Mentions Surgery!
Plenty of references and mentions of surgery exist in the well-known historical set of codes. This is very effective because we know that surgeons and surgery as a procedure have been present and around even in the very early civilizations, like the Babylonians. For example, this known mention: “If a surgeon performs a major operation which saves the life of a free person, that surgeon shall be paid eighty grams of silver”. This is clear evidence that surgery has been part of society even in the very early civilizations and followed us till now.
Roman (Greek) Surgery
The early Roman surgical practice was borrowed by the Greeks; many Roman surgeons came from Greece. Due to no effective methods of sedation, surgery was extremely “bloody” and “painful”; surgeons were praised, valued, and honored for their speed and not their skill. At the time, most patients subject to Roman surgery were injured gladiators or wounded soldiers. Romans were known to perform minor, simple procedures, Cesarean section (the C – Section, which they had developed), and amputations. It is worth noting that at this particular time, Cesarean sections were not used as a method of regular delivery but rather as a technique used to remove the baby from the wound of the mother who had died during delivery. The legacy of Roman surgery was the fact that the Romans developed many surgical techniques and instruments, which modern variants of are still used today. Overall, external operations were more common, and internal procedures were rare as anesthetics were still not invented, which made the process of internal surgery very challenging and risky.
The Medieval Times
During the Medieval era, surgery had gone backward, as the books and recordings of the Greeks and the Romans were lost during the fall of the Roman empire. Lectures and teachings in anatomy at the time were known to be incredibly basic. Bizarrely, during this era, the credibility of the ideas was mostly judged by the debating skills of the person who made the discovery rather than the scientific proof. This inevitably led to a much slower progression of science and medicine in this era. However, because the Middle Ages were a violent period, there was a reasonably high demand for surgery. Unfortunately, surgeons were not as regarded as they had been in the past. One step forward in the Middle Ages is that people began to understand the basic concepts of using alcohol as a mild anesthetic; during this period, wine was used. Surgeries in this period were still very simple like they had been in the past.
Invention of Modern Anesthesia
In the American city of Boston (1846), a young dentist, William T.G. Morton, invented one of the two greatest medical discoveries ever to be made; Anesthesia. Morton was performing a public demonstration in Massachusetts, Morton administered Ether to a patient in surgery, and the surgery was a success, this started further research and discoveries into Anesthesia improving the art of surgery. This drives the vast research in medicine nowadays.
Today, the field of Medicine progresses like no other; vast research is being done at an unimaginable rate to create the most ideal medical system possible. Today we can do amazing procedures that could not have even been imagined in the past, this will be the same with the future; Medicine and research are growing at an exponential rate. We understand a lot about the human body, but we have no right to say that we know how the body works; this research can be carried out forever as there is so much to discover. This is the beauty that scientists find in research; research is a movement of passion that never stops and is driven by dedicated people. It is this that will help us move today’s society forward by always using what we have to find out more.
