A Brief History of Surgery

Harvard FAS

The history of surgery begins with the Hippocratic physicians whose principles were based, at least partly, on observation and measurement. However, surgical thinking for first three quarters of the “modern era” was dominated by Galen of Pergamum who, “fooled by his monkeys,” established a school of thought as false as it was tightly held. The exposure of Galen’s errors by Vesalius in 1543 and Harvey in 1628 began a Medical Enlightenment. It would take until the 19th century for the next era…