Page 179 - (DK) Danger! Open with Extreme Caution!

6 Burn and seal
Casualties of war often have hideous injuries. In older times,
battlefield surgeons would seal wounds with boiling oil to stop
SAY bleeding. This surgeon is using a more modern method—
aAaARGH!
red-hot irons—to seal a wound. You may hear some sizzling!

3

4
I LOVE
A GoOD
BARBECUE…
OH DEAR,
I FeEL
QUITE
FAINT.

6

sSShHH, DID YOU SAY
I HAVEN’T THIS WAS
STARTED YOUR FIRST
YET! OPERATION?

7

5

5 Gallstone removal 7 Ice-pick lobotomy
This patient has a hard stone in his gallbladder causing Dating from the 1930s, this gruesome procedure, called
unbearable pain. Let’s hope his doctor has the skill of a lobotomy, was used for treating mental illness. The surgeon
18th-century surgeon William Cheselden. This speedy is about to hammer an ice pick through the back of the patient’s
operator used a sharp curved knife and could cut into eye socket and into his brain in the hope that it will change his
the gallbladder and remove a stone in only 45 seconds. behavior. It’s more likely to drive him insane!

HISTORICAL SURGICAL PROCEDURES 179
(c) 2011 Dorling Kindersley. All Rights Reserved.