19th Century: The Birth of Surgery

So many surgical firsts occurred during the 19th century. Many of these discoveries led to procedures that are still being performed today. Let’s look at some of the surgical firsts and discoveries that occurred during this time.

• 1818: First blood transfusion
• 1843: First hysterectomy
• 1846: Ether used for the first time as an inhalation anesthetic
• 1855: Mary Edwards Walker is the first woman to graduate from medical school; she becomes America’s first female surgeon
• 1861: Louis Pasteur develops modern germ theory that bacteria cause contamination
• 1867: Joseph Lister publishes “Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery,” which discusses cleanliness and hand washing for surgery, principles that will carry over into modern day surgical nursing with surgical scrubbing before surgery
• 1885: First appendectomy performed in Iowa
• 1890: Carbolic acid used to disinfect a surgical site to prevent postoperative infections
• 1893: First heart surgery performed at Provident Hospital to repair a defect in the pericardium (Some will argue that this isn’t considered heart surgery because it was the heart lining and not the organ itself.)
• 1895: First X-ray performed in Germany
• 1896: First open heart surgery performed in Germany to fix a patient’s right ventricle after a stabbing

References

1. Clunie A. Surgery…a violent profession. Hartford Stage. Accessed August 9, 2023. https://www.hartfordstage.org/stagenotes/ether-dome/history-of-surgery
2. Rutkow I. Empire of The Scalpel. 1st ed. New York, NY: Scribner; 2022.
3. Schneider D. The Invention of Surgery. 1st ed. Holland, OH: Dreamscape Media, LLC; 2020.
4. Gawande A. Two hundred years of surgery. New Engl J Med. 2012;366(18):1716-1723. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmra1202392