Changes before World War I
The opening decade of the 20th century was a period of transition. Flamboyant exhibitionism was falling from favour as surgeons, through experience, learned the merits of painstaking, conscientious operation—treating the tissues gently and carefully controlling every bleeding point. The individualist was not submerged, however, and for many years the development of the various branches of surgery rested on the shoulders of a few clearly identifiable men. Teamwork on a large scale arrived only after World War II. The surgeon, at first, was undisputed master in his own wards and theatre. But as time went on and he found he could not solve his problems alone, he called for help from specialists in other fields of medicine and, even more significantly, from colleagues in other scientific disciplines.
The increasing scope of surgery led to specialization. Most general surgeons had a special interest, and for a long time there had been an element of specialization in such fields as ophthalmology, orthopedics, and obstetrics and gynecology. Before long, however, it became apparent that, to achieve progress in certain areas, surgeons had to concentrate their attention on that particular subject.
Abdominal surgery
By the start of the 20th century, abdominal surgery, which provided the general surgeon with the bulk of his work, had grown beyond infancy, thanks largely to Billroth. In 1881 he had performed the first successful removal of part of the stomach for cancer. His next two cases were failures, and he was stoned in the streets of Vienna. Yet, he persisted and by 1891 had carried out 41 more of these operations with 16 deaths—a remarkable achievement for that era.
Peptic ulcers (gastric and duodenal) appeared on the surgical scene (perhaps as a new disease, but more probably because they had not been diagnosed previously), and in 1881 Ludwig Rydygier cured a young woman of her gastric ulcer by removing it. Bypass operations—gastroenterostomies—soon became more popular, however, and enjoyed a vogue that lasted into the 1930s, even though fresh ulcers at the site of the juncture were not uncommon.
The other end of the alimentary tract was also subjected to surgical intervention; cancers were removed from the large bowel and rectum with mortality rates that gradually fell from 80 to 60 to 20 to 12 percent as the surgeons developed their skill. In 1908 British surgeon Ernest Miles carried out the first abdominoperineal resection for cancer of the rectum; that is, the cancer was attacked both from the abdomen and from below through the perineum (the area between the anus and the genitals), either by one surgeon, who actually did two operations, or by two working together. This technique formed the basis for all future developments.
Much of the new surgery in the abdomen was for cancer, but not all. Appendectomy became the accepted treatment for appendicitis (in appropriate cases) in the United States before the close of the 19th century, but in Great Britain surgeons were reluctant to remove the organ until 1902, when King Edward VII’s coronation was dramatically postponed on account of his appendicitis. The publicity attached to his operation caused the disease and its surgical treatment to become fashionable despite the fact that the royal appendix remained in the king’s abdomen; the surgeon, Frederic Treves, had merely drained the abscess.
Neurosurgery
Though probably the most demanding of all the surgical specialties, neurosurgery was nevertheless one of the first to emerge. The techniques and principles of general surgery were inadequate for work in such a delicate field. William Macewen, a Scottish general surgeon of outstanding versatility, and Victor Alexander Haden Horsley, the first British neurosurgeon, showed that the surgeon had much to offer in the treatment of disease of the brain and spinal cord. Macewen, in 1893, recorded 19 patients operated on for brain abscess, 18 of whom were cured; at that time most other surgeons had 100 percent mortality rates for the condition. His achievement remained unequaled until the discovery of penicillin.
American surgeon Harvey Williams Cushing almost by himself consolidated neurosurgery as a specialty. From 1905 on, he advanced neurosurgery through a series of operations and through his writings. Tumours, epilepsy, trigeminal neuralgia, and pituitary disorders were among the conditions he treated successfully.
Radiology
In 1895 a development at the University of Würzburg had far-reaching effects on medicine and surgery, opening up an entirely fresh field of the diagnosis and study of disease and leading to a new form of treatment, radiation therapy. This was the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, a professor of physics. Within months of the discovery there was an extensive literature on the subject: Robert Jones, a British surgeon, had localized a bullet in a boy’s wrist before operating; stones in the urinary bladder and gallbladder had been demonstrated; and bone fractures had been displayed.
Experiments began on introducing substances that are opaque to X-rays into the body to reveal organs and formations, both normal and abnormal. Walter Bradford Cannon, a Boston physiologist, used X-rays in 1898 in his studies of the alimentary tract. Friedrich Voelcker of Heidelberg devised retrograde pyelography (introduction of the radiopaque medium into the kidney pelvis by way of the ureter) for the study of the urinary tract in 1905; in Paris in 1921 Jean Sicard X-rayed the spinal canal with the help of an oily iodine substance, and the next year he did the same for the bronchial tree; and in 1924 Evarts Graham of St. Louis used a radiopaque contrast medium to view the gallbladder. Air was also used to provide contrast; in 1918 at Johns Hopkins, Walter Dandy injected air into the ventricles (liquid-filled cavities) of the brain.
The problems of injecting contrast media into the blood vessels took longer to solve, and it was not until 1927 that António Moniz of Lisbon succeeded in obtaining pictures of the arteries of the brain. Eleven years later George Robb and Israel Steinberg of New York overcame some of the difficulties of cardiac catheterization (introduction of a small tube into the heart by way of veins or arteries) and were able to visualize the chambers of the heart on X-ray film. After much research, a further refinement came in 1962, when Frank Sones and Earl K. Shirey of Cleveland showed how to introduce the contrast medium into the coronary arteries.
World War I
The battlefields of the 20th century stimulated the progress of surgery and taught the surgeon innumerable lessons, which were subsequently applied in civilian practice. Regrettably, though, the principles of military surgery and casualty evacuation, which can be traced back to the Napoleonic Wars, had to be learned over again.
World War I broke, quite dramatically, the existing surgical hierarchy and rule of tradition. No longer did the European surgeon have to waste his best years in apprenticeship before seating himself in his master’s chair. Suddenly, young surgeons in the armed forces began confronting problems that would have daunted their elders. Furthermore, their training had been in “clean” surgery performed under aseptic conditions. Now they found themselves faced with the need to treat large numbers of grossly contaminated wounds in improvised theatres. They rediscovered debridement (the surgical excision of dead and dying tissue and the removal of foreign matter).
The older surgeons cried “back to Lister,” but antiseptics, no matter how strong, were no match for putrefaction and gangrene. One method of antiseptic irrigation—devised by Alexis Carrel and Henry Dakin and called the Carrel–Dakin treatment—was beneficial, however, but only after the wound had been adequately debrided. The scourges of tetanus and gas gangrene were controlled to a large extent by antitoxin and antiserum injections, yet surgical treatment of the wound remained an essential requirement.
Abdominal casualties fared badly for the first year of the war, because experience in the utterly different circumstances of the South African War had led to a belief that these men were better left alone surgically. Fortunately, the error of continuing with such a policy 15 years later was soon appreciated, and every effort was made to deliver the wounded men to a suitable surgical unit with all speed. Little progress was made with chest wounds beyond opening up the wound even further to drain pus from the pleural cavity between the chest wall and the lungs.
Perhaps the most worthwhile and enduring benefit to flow from World War I was rehabilitation. For almost the first time, surgeons realized that their work did not end with a healed wound. In 1915 Robert Jones set up special facilities for orthopedic patients, and at about the same time Harold Gillies founded British plastic surgery in a hut at Sidcup, Kent. In 1917 Gillies popularized the pedicle type of skin graft (the type of graft in which skin and subcutaneous tissue are left temporarily attached for nourishment to the site from which the graft was taken). Since then plastic surgery has given many techniques and principles to other branches of surgery.
Between the World Wars
The years between the two World Wars may conveniently be regarded as the time when surgery consolidated its position. A surprising number of surgical firsts and an amazing amount of fundamental research had been achieved even in the late 19th century, but the knowledge and experience could not be converted to practical use because the human body could not survive the onslaught. In the years between World Wars I and II, it was realized that physiology—in its widest sense, including biochemistry and fluid and electrolyte balance—was of major importance along with anatomy, pathology, and surgical technique.