Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach

Surgery for Stuttering

In the 19th century, Europe and the United States saw a "mania for operating."
An empty wheelchair

The Complicated Issue of Transableism

Some people born in able bodies feel as if they were meant to have disabilities. How should the medical community be responding?
dental surgery ether painting

19th Century Anesthesia and the Politics of Pain

Many doctors embraced anesthesia, but critics in the medical community protested its use, giving rise to what's known as the “ether controversy.”
Lister spraying phenol over the wound while the doctors perform an operation.

Joseph Lister’s Antiseptic Revolution

Joseph Lister's landmark articles on antiseptic surgery in the Lancet were published 150 years ago. The revolution was not immediate.
Boston City Hospital operating theater, circa 1890, by A. H. Folsom (d. 1926) of Roxbury

Inside the Operating Theater: Early Surgery as Spectacle

Director Steven Soderbergh’s historical drama series, The Knick, brings viewers inside a New York City hospital’s operating room ...
The Brain That Wouldn't Die - 1962 - Joseph Green

Head Transplants: A History

The first human head transplant is scheduled for 2017. But the possibility of transplants has transfixed scientists for most of the last century.