Two Hundred Years of Surgery

Atul Gawande, M.D., M.P.H.

N Engl J Med 2012; 366:1716-1723May 3, 2012

 Comments open through December 31, 2012

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Surgery 1812-2012.

Surgery is a profession defined by its authority to cure by means of bodily invasion. The brutality and risks of opening a living person's body have long been apparent, the benefits only slowly and haltingly worked out. Nonetheless, over the past two centuries, surgery has become radically more effective, and its violence substantially reduced — changes that have proved central to the development of mankind's abilities to heal the sick./.../