Belly-Rippers, Surgical Innovation and the Ovariotomy Controversy

Sally Frampton author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Springer International Publishing AG

Published:15th Jan '19

Should be back in stock very soon

Belly-Rippers, Surgical Innovation and the Ovariotomy Controversy cover

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.

ISBN: 9783319786100

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

267 pages

2018 ed.