Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 November 2006 04:22:07
I am currently reading a biography of John Hunter and it's all very interesting.
Did you know that if I were studying medicine in the 1700s and wished to learn anatomy, I would quite likely have had to go and find my own corpse to dissect? There were a few options for finding corpses - grave robbing was popular but there was also the opportunity to fight fellow corpse seekers and grieving relatives after a hanging. There were professional grave robbers and corpse finders but often it was the medical students who did the dirty work.
At the moment in many medical schools there is a reasonable amount of fuss over the deficiency in the anatomy syllabus. Anatomy was a huge business around the time of John Hunter - many rich young men learnt it for interest's sake. However many surgeons knew little to nothing about the subject. They also didn't know anything about transmission of infection. Hand washing and using clean surgical instruments were still a twinkle in Lister's eye. Well probably his grandfather's eye. Or some such ancestor.
Anyway, it's surprising that anyone survived surgery in those times. But they did. For some operations the mortality was only one in five. Sounds a lot by our standards, but considering the lack of anatomical training, the lack of aseptic technique and the lack of anaesthetics, I think it's pretty impressive.