Body snatching, boiling bones, wilful ignorance and the birth of observation, accidental discoveries involving turpentine and egg white, and a simple cut finger: Bloody Beginnings is the story of trauma surgery.
All of us are likely at some point in our lives to go under the knife, and if we do, we should thank our lucky stars that we are alive now and not 150 years ago. For much of history, surgeons killed more people than they saved. To get to where we are today we have had to overcome four major obstacles to successful surgery:
~ understanding anatomy,
~ managing blood loss,
~ overcoming infection and
~ discovering pain relief.
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