Shocking facts about the Victorian surgery

Shocking facts about the Victorian surgery

We did not fully realize how lucky we are to modern medicine. If we look at the books on medicine and surgery just over a century ago, that is, during the Victorian era (1837-1901), then we will have a feeling that we were in a dark and gloomy Middle Ages.

The Victorian era - the period of the reign of Victoria, Queen of the British Empire, Ireland and India.

Real innovative progress in this matter began to take place only from about 1890, and prior to that, patients were forced to suffer severely during almost any interventions. The high mortality rate during surgery during this time was widely reported in newspapers, magazines, medical work and the risk of dying there, even for a relatively healthy person in a very simple operation. It really was a difficult time for the Victorian surgeons, but thanks to modern science, all these horror stories already in the past.

10. Chloroform was the only anesthetic for years

The idea of ​​surgery without anesthesia now simply impossible to imagine, but it was a harsh reality in the past. Only in 1847, chloroform was introduced in the UK and has been used as the sole anesthetic is possible over the next 50 years.

Shocking facts about the Victorian surgery

The Scottish obstetrician Sir James Simpson was the first to use chloroform in the treatment and he used it for pain relief in childbirth. Simpson invented a mask that is saturated with vapors of chloroform, and then placed on the patient's face. operation begins after only a few minutes of preparation. Even Queen Victoria was given chloroform during the birth of her last two children.

9. To stop the bleeding using red-hot irons

In Victorian surgery, where the military surgeons are often faced with heavy bleeding from the wound, the hot iron was often used to stop the flow of blood. Obviously, this was a very unpleasant treatment, and the kind of alternative cauterization was found long before the Victorian era.

The scientific journal "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society," once wrote about one such method, which, as it turns out, has been known since the 1670's. Surprisingly, they even described the operation as "fun" experience for the patient.

"The foot of this poor woman has been cut off and the stump was shook some linen soaked in some astringent composition with a tight compress and a bandage on it. The success was the fact that the arteries were prizhzheny hot iron, and it stopped bleeding. The woman did not suffer from severe pain and he looked relaxed and even cheerful. she was fast asleep two hours later and then sleep well the next night. she was every day getting better and better. "

8. From surgery died a huge number of patients

Surgery in the Victorian era was deadly, but most do not because of the intervention of surgeons, and because of the huge risk of infection after surgery.

According to the medical historian Dr. Lindsey Fittsharrissa:

"Surgeons have never washed their tools or hands. And even the operating tables are rarely washed. These places have become a slow machine for killing the patient, as they are almost always picked up the deadly post-operative infection, sometimes just a few days, and sometimes slowly dying from them within a month. " Surgeons also poorly understood nature of pus. Despite the sharp nasty smell, doctors believed that pus emanating from the wound, it is evidence of the healing process going, rather than what is the result of growing bacterial infection.

Shocking facts about the Victorian surgery

The high mortality rate of postoperative "fever" began to decline only when the surgeon Joseph Lister (1827-1912) introduced the practice of antiseptic and sterile environment in hospitals. Now Lister is known as "the father of antiseptic surgery."

7. The barber surgeons were both

Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, before the start of the Crimean War in 1853, there was a short period of relative calm in the UK. During the fighting days, however, the usual barbers became massively recruited as a military surgeon and he was assigned to operations on the wounded.

Despite the lack of extensive knowledge or formal training, barber-surgeon copes with its task to pull teeth, bleed and even do such a surgery as the amputation of limbs or stitching wounds.

6. The massive use of leeches

These days, for most people the idea that their skin will crawl slimy worm-like creatures, make shudder with disgust.

Leeches are now used on a regular basis, but are considered alternative medicine on a far smaller scale than in the Victorian era, when they were almost considered a panacea for all ills.

The practice of bloodletting is harmful, as it can lead to anemia, but the Victorian doctors about it did not think.

Shocking facts about the Victorian surgery

5. The faster running saw the surgeon, the better

Imagine that your foot saw off due to a broken bone or fracture, and at the same time you're lying on the operating table, and most likely in full consciousness as anesthesia can not be used. You well see the whole process of amputation and even have time to notice (if you do not lose consciousness from a painful shock) as your severed leg throw in a bucket of sawdust.

So it is not surprising that patients in this case will rely on the most efficient and rapid surgeon.

Dr. Robert Liston (1794-1847) was known as one of the most renowned surgeons in history and was nicknamed "the fastest knife in the West End." He cut off a limb saw their patients with such speed, that shout the phrase "My time, gentlemen! My time!" and after only a couple of minutes limb was flying to the floor.

Such a high rate of amputation yielded fruit. It is believed that Liston died, only one out of ten patients died of other surgeons, on average four out of ten. The reception is constantly crowded with patients Liston, relying on his quick hand.

Shocking facts about the Victorian surgery

4. Victorian hospitals have been only for the poor

If the Victorian era you were a wealthy person, your family doctor treating you would at home, with full comfort, and you would not leave his room. But if you are poor, you are admitted to the hospital. Wealthy mothers also gave birth at home, in hospitals and the poor (and died there like flies from puerperal fever, and upon infection with dirty hands of a doctor who does not wash his hands even after autopsy).

In hospitals, often taking new patients only once a week and immediately identify only two categories - either in the "incurable infection" or as suffering from mental illness. Wards for patients are located on the top floor of the hospital, but if you are so poor that you have no money for treatment, you will have to examine in the treatment room, where you will be invited viewers to stare. Otherwise you will have to find a wealthy patron who is ready to pay for your treatment.

3. The surgeons wore clothes with traces of blood and the smell of pus

British surgeon Sir Berkeley Moynihan (1865-1936), recalls how his colleague surgeons go to work and included in the operating room in the old surgical aprons that were "stiff with dried blood and pus."

Victorian surgeons often wore their bloodied clothes with special pride, and every day they carried home with the smell of rotting flesh. It also gave its mortality rate is not surprising that the Victorian hospitals were considered to a greater degree of "houses of death" rather than "healing houses."

2. The curious crowds keep the operations of

While patients writhed on the operating table, and even tried to escape during painful procedures, the audience sat in chairs around and enjoyed it as a show. To work in such an environment for the audience there was nothing unusual in the Victorian era. About the risk of infection at all, no one thought.

Historian Fitsharris Lindsay writes:

"The first two rows were occupied offsuit dandies, behind which stood the disciples, tightly packed there like herrings in a barrel, and creating a lot of noise. Always someone shouted that he did not see anything, and made room for others."

Shocking facts about the Victorian surgery

The painful cries of patients and loud crowd, watch the operations could be heard even in the street outside the hospital.

1. One of the most famous Victorian surgeons after the death of the woman turned out to be

In 1865 died the popular surgeon Dr. James Barry. His tombstone reads: "Dr. James Barry, Inspector General Hospital." He is considered one of the most successful surgeons in Victorian history, but in fact he was ... a woman.

Barry actually named Margaret Ann Bulkley. Girl from his youth dreamed of becoming a doctor, but women in this type of work did not start and did not give proper education. Then Margaret Ann decided to become James Barry. Under this name it is enlisted in the army as a doctor and in 1826 held a successful caesarean section in Cape Town, seven years before the first time such an operation done in the UK.

All his life, James Barry trusted only his assistant, and the truth about her real field only occasionally opened maid to wash her body after death. Soon this information hurried scramble to prevent the development of the scandal. Only at the beginning of the XXI professional research has been conducted to confirm that James Barry was really a woman.