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oapen-20.500.12657-283542021-11-12T16:08:54Z Chapter 16 Surgery and Emotion Brown, Michael History pre-anesthetic surgery bic Book Industry Communication::M Medicine::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine bic Book Industry Communication::M Medicine::MN Surgery In this chapter I have endeavoured to demonstrate the ways in which an approach that takes the emotions seriously might nuance and complicate our understandings of the history of pre-anaesthetic surgery. In general, historians have tended to focus on the operations of surgical dispassion, or what we might now term clinical detachment. What this research suggests, however, is that compassion and emotional expression played a surprisingly important role in shaping the cultures of early nineteenth-century operative surgery as well as the identities of its practitioners. In the decades immediately preceding the advent of anaesthesia, pain became a central concern of surgical discourse and the response to this concern was shaped by the cultures of sentiment and sensibility. However, this culture of compassion was no ‘natural’ reaction to a self-evident problem. Rather, it was a culturally and historically contingent phenomenon which could be harnessed to the ideologies and ambitions of medical reform. In the hands of men like John Bell and Thomas Wakley, the image of the surgeon as a man of refined and honest sentiment was linked to a critique of the medical and surgical ancien regime, providing an idealised representation of a more expert, meritocratic and altruistic profession. 2018-10-02 23:55 2020-03-18 13:36:15 2020-04-01T12:21:29Z 2020-04-01T12:21:29Z 2018 chapter 1001603 OCN: 1076650674 http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/28354 eng application/pdf n/a surgery_and_emotion.pdf Springer Nature The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Surgery Palgrave Macmillan 10.1057/978-1-349-95260-1_16 10.1057/978-1-349-95260-1_16 6c6992af-b843-4f46-859c-f6e9998e40d5 d839602a-b7b8-412c-95ab-6b3adfc09c9c d859fbd3-d884-4090-a0ec-baf821c9abfd Wellcome Palgrave Macmillan 22 Basingstoke Wellcome Trust Wellcome open access
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In this chapter I have endeavoured to demonstrate the ways in which an
approach that takes the emotions seriously might nuance and complicate
our understandings of the history of pre-anaesthetic surgery. In general,
historians have tended to focus on the operations of surgical dispassion, or
what we might now term clinical detachment. What this research suggests,
however, is that compassion and emotional expression played a surprisingly
important role in shaping the cultures of early nineteenth-century operative
surgery as well as the identities of its practitioners. In the decades immediately
preceding the advent of anaesthesia, pain became a central concern of
surgical discourse and the response to this concern was shaped by the cultures
of sentiment and sensibility. However, this culture of compassion was
no ‘natural’ reaction to a self-evident problem. Rather, it was a culturally
and historically contingent phenomenon which could be harnessed to the
ideologies and ambitions of medical reform. In the hands of men like John
Bell and Thomas Wakley, the image of the surgeon as a man of refined and
honest sentiment was linked to a critique of the medical and surgical ancien
regime, providing an idealised representation of a more expert, meritocratic
and altruistic profession.
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