Publication Date:
2024-04-04
Description:
This open access book looks at the dramatic history of ovariotomy, an operation to remove ovarian tumours first practiced in the early nineteenth century. Bold and daring, surgeons who performed it claimed to be initiating a new era of surgery by opening the abdomen. Ovariotomy soon occupied a complex position within medicine and society, as an operation which symbolised surgical progress, while also remaining at the boundaries of ethical acceptability. This book traces the operation’s innovation, from its roots in eighteenth-century pathology, through the denouncement of those who performed it as ‘belly-rippers’, to its rapid uptake in the 1880s, when ovariotomists were accused of over-operating. Throughout the century, the operation was never a hair’s breadth from controversy.
Keywords:
History
;
History
;
Social history
;
Medicine—History
;
Abdominal surgery
;
Sociology
;
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history
;
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSF Gender studies, gender groups
;
thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine
;
thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MN Surgery::MNC General surgery
;
thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PD Science: general issues::PDX History of science
Language:
English
Format:
image/jpeg
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