John Collins Warren, a founding member of the Massachusetts General Hospital, its first surgeon, and founder of the New England Journal of Medicine. There is the story of the first use of anesthesia in an operation performed by Dr. Schwartz is at his best in presenting these clinical and timeless descriptions of events that shaped the history of surgery in America. After recuperating for several weeks, she returned home by horseback, alone, and remained very much alive until age 78, having long outlived her surgeon. The surgical proceedings, absent anesthesia or antisepsis, are hard to imagine in the present day. Crawford traveled alone for days on horseback, balancing the tumor on her saddle, but arriving intact for her appointment with history. Ephraim McDowell said that he would attempt to remove the tumor (which had been incorrectly diagnosed as a growing fetus) if she could make it to his office.
There is the unforgettable story of Jane Todd Crawford, the courageous patient who would become forever linked to a “daring” surgeon who launched the field of intra-abdominal surgery in 1809.
The stories contain fascinating detail about not only the surgeons, but also their patients, some of whom were essentially partners in the high-risk experiment that would either improve or end their lives. The book chronicles the stories of individuals who first successfully invaded a body compartment or developed a life-saving technique that changed the way surgery was subsequently practiced. In Gifted Hands: America’s Most Significant Contributions to Surgery, Seymour Schwartz reviews the history of surgery in North America, covering the evolution and advances in this field from the colonial period to the present.
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