Surgery and Emotion: The Era Before Anaesthesia

TY - CHAP

T1 - Surgery and Emotion

T2 - The Era Before Anaesthesia

AU - Brown, Michael

PY - 2017/12/14

Y1 - 2017/12/14

N2 - This chapter explores the place of emotion within operative surgery. Before the advent of anaesthetics in the 1840s, surgical operations were conducted with little or no pain relief and were attended with great suffering and emotional distress. It has generally been assumed that in order to cope with such challenges, surgeons developed a culture of dispassion and emotional detachment. However, building upon the insights of the history of the emotions, this chapter will demonstrate that the operating theatre could play host to a wide range of more complex feelings including fear, pity, and sympathy. Moreover, it suggests that any account of emotion in the history of surgery must take into account the politics of feeling and the ‘emotional regimes’ of the period.© 2017 The Author. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

AB - This chapter explores the place of emotion within operative surgery. Before the advent of anaesthetics in the 1840s, surgical operations were conducted with little or no pain relief and were attended with great suffering and emotional distress. It has generally been assumed that in order to cope with such challenges, surgeons developed a culture of dispassion and emotional detachment. However, building upon the insights of the history of the emotions, this chapter will demonstrate that the operating theatre could play host to a wide range of more complex feelings including fear, pity, and sympathy. Moreover, it suggests that any account of emotion in the history of surgery must take into account the politics of feeling and the ‘emotional regimes’ of the period.© 2017 The Author. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

U2 - 10.1057/978-1-349-95260-1_16

DO - 10.1057/978-1-349-95260-1_16

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-1-349-95259-5

SP - 327

EP - 348

BT - The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Surgery

A2 - Schlich, Thomas

PB - Palgrave Macmillan

CY - London

ER -