surgery: Early History

In prehistoric times, sharpened flints and other sharp-edged devices were used to perform various surgical operations. Circumcision and other ritualistic operations were later performed with similar instruments. There are indications that in Neolithic times saws of stone and bone were used to perform amputations. Nearly all major operations were performed by the ancient Hindus nearly a thousand years before the advent of Greek medicine. Knowledge of the use of soporific potions to alleviate the pain caused by surgery can be traced to remote antiquity.

The early Greeks and Romans practiced surgery with great skill and with such cleanliness that infection of surgical and other wounds was relatively uncommon. Their cleanliness and their use of boiled water or wine for irrigating wounds was probably suggested by Hippocrates, a competent surgeon and diagnostician of that time. Other notable early surgeons were Erasistratus and Herophilus of the medical school at Alexandria, and Galen, whose numerous treatises were long influential.

The surgical and sanitary techniques employed by the Greeks and Romans were lost with the decline of their civilizations. During the Middle Ages in Europe there was a marked regression in surgical knowledge, and postoperative infection was common. Surgical practice soon fell into the hands of the unskilled and uneducated: the barber-surgeon, who performed the usual functions of a barber as well as surgical operations, became a common figure, especially in England and France. It was not until the 18th cent. that surgery began to reach a professional level. There were, nevertheless, notable figures in early surgery, among them Guy de Chauliac in the 14th cent., and in the 16th cent. Ambroise Paré, who developed sutures and ligatures to stop bleeding and sew up wounds.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Surgery in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
• The Birth of Modern Surgery
• Early History
• Bibliography

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