Jürgen Thorwald "A Hundred Surgeons"

Author: Jurgen Thorwald Genre: Fiction First edition: 1956 Medical topic: History of medicine Description: A must-read for medical students! In the daily hustle and bustle of hospital wards, while using modern equipment or reviewing lab results, do we ever ask ourselves how doctors diagnosed and treated patients in the past? What coincidence led to the use of rubber gloves in the operating room, how was anesthesia discovered, and what were the beginnings of brain surgery? Jürgen Thorwald’s Century of Surgeons will take you on an incredible journey back to a time when the medical principles we know today did not yet exist, and death from appendicitis was commonplace. These were times when a patient’s survival after an arm amputation was a major success, paid for with his hellish agony—since the procedure was performed without anesthesia. What mattered then was the surgeon’s dexterity and speed, as he operated on a patient fully conscious of the pain; speed, therefore, allowed suffering to be minimized. We have the chance to learn the stories of these extraordinary people who, in saving patients, often acted against generally accepted and recognized principles of treatment, defying medical authorities by performing procedures previously deemed impossible. This is not a story in the style of the aforementioned series. Although there are glimpses into the characters’ private lives here as well, these are not sentimental tales of romance tinged with a dose of sex. Rather, they serve to illustrate the situations in which the next medical discovery took place. You will surely be captivated by the story of a doctor who, out of love for a nurse, invented rubber gloves to protect her hands from eczema caused by the antiseptics used in operating rooms at the time. I leave other, equally fascinating stories for you to discover on your own.