Story Time gives interesting overview of History of Medicine, relevant today.

3. Dominique Jean Larrey 1766 –1842
• French surgeon in Napoleon's army
• Greatest military surgeon of all times
• Participated in 25 campaigns and over 60 battles
• Managed all the wounded soldiers (Even Enemy)
• Record of doing 200 amputations in 24 hours

4. Dominique Jean Larrey
• Found time for extensive writing.
• He wrote on rabies, tetanus,
aneurysms, elephantiasis scroti,
urine atrophy, etc.
• First to observe that Trachoma
and conjunctivitis are contagious
• First description of trench foot.
• Method of Packing wounds with
ice and snow for pain relief

5. Innovations of Larrey
• He invented the field ambulance to carry soldiers
• Flying Ambulances for rapid transport
• Alone managed all Medical Care in battlefield
• First to described the therapeutic use of maggots
• He did first amputation at the hip in 1812

6. Dominique Jean Larrey
• Loved by the French soldiers and respected
by the enemies
• Enemy - Duke of Wellington ordered his
soldiers not to fire in his direction
• When Larrey sustained a gunshot wound.
Ironically, he was left wounded
• He was promptly sentenced to death -- until
the Prussian commander happened to pass
by and immediately released him because
Larrey had treated his son.

8. Robert Liston 1794 –1847
Speed Surgeon
• Robert Liston, first Professor
of Clinical Surgery
• Prior to the 19th century,
every wound was a potential
case of gangrene.
• To amputate gangrenous
limb, without anaesthesia.
• Pain management - a swig
of whiskey and a knock on
the head with a hammer

9. Robert Liston: Speed Surgeon
• So, a merciful surgery was
a very fast surgery.
• Required sharp Instruments,
a lightning-quick hand and
careful precision.
• Robert Liston had the first
two - could amputate one leg
in less than three minutes --
skin, bone, muscle, tendon,
through.

10. Surgery in 1800

11. Liston’s 300% Mortality Case
• Amputated the leg in under
21/2 minutes
– Patient died afterwards in the ward
• Amputated in addition the fingers of
his young assistant
– He died afterwards in the ward from
hospital gangrene.
• Slashed through the coat of a
surgical spectator
– Dropped dead from fright

12. Robert Liston: Speed Surgeon
• He also performed the first operation in
Europe under Ether Anaesthesia using
ether, on 21 December 1846
• Soon after he died in 1847

14. Dr. J. Marion Sims 1813 - 1883
• Father of Gynaecology
• South Carolina’s Father Butcher
• Medical experiments with enslaved
women, done without anaesthesia or
antiseptics.
• Many lost their lives.
• First surgery – Punctured a
abdominal mass with Shoemaking
awls. The patient was relieved.

15. Gift to Gynaecology
• First Forceps application
• Sims speculum – Used a spoon
• He fashioned over 71 surgical
instruments
• Sims' sigmoid catheter
• Operated Vesico-vaginal fistula
• First gallbladder surgery,
• Introduction of antiseptic
principles

16. Ethical Controversy
• Repair of vesico-vaginal fistula
• 30 surgeries done on ‘Anarcha’
without anaesthesia to perfect his
technique of silver-wire sutures.
• He operated the upper-class
white women with ether
anaesthesia.