Belly-Rippers, Surgical Innovation and the Ovariotomy Controversy (Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History) - Hardcover

Frampton, Sally

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3319786105 ISBN 13: 9783319786100

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Sally Frampton is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford, UK. She has previously published on surgery in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and on the history of the medical press.

From the Back 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3319786105
• ISBN 13: 9783319786100
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 283