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.

Offers a history of the establishment and development of this controversial surgical practice Explores key ethical issues in nineteenth-century medicine and society Provides a new analytical framework inclusive of gender in which surgical innovation is the conceptual focal point

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt

Chapter One: Introduction.- Chapter Two: Pathologies, Actions, Ideas.- Chapter Three: Representations of Practice.- Chapter Four: Patent Concerns, Unpatentable Procedures.- Chapter Five: The Business of Surgery.- Chapter Six: The Afterlife of an Operation.- Chapter Seven: Conclusion.