Main description:

In this innovative analytical account of the place of emotion and embodiment in nineteenth-century British surgery, Michael Brown examines the changing emotional dynamics of surgical culture for both surgeons and patients from the pre-anaesthetic era through the introduction of anaesthesia and antisepsis techniques. Drawing on diverse archival and published sources, Brown explores how an emotional regime of Romantic sensibility, in which emotions played a central role in the practice and experience of surgery, was superseded by one of scientific modernity, in which the emotions of both patient and practitioner were increasingly marginalised. Demonstrating that the cultures of contemporary surgery and the emotional identities of its practitioners have their origins in the cultural and conceptual upheavals of the later nineteenth century, this book challenges us to question our perception of the pre-anaesthetic period as an era of bloody brutality and casual cruelty. This title is also available as open access.

Contents:

Introduction; 1. Between art and artifice: emotion and performance in Romantic surgery; 2. Anxiety and compassion: emotional intersubjectivity and the Romantic surgical relationship; 3. The patient's voice: conscious and unconscious agency in Romantic surgery; 4. 'Scenes of cruelty and blood': emotion, melodrama, and the politics of Romantic surgical reform; 5. Quiescent bodies: utilitarianism and the reconfiguration of surgical emotion; 6. The 'new world of surgery': sepsis, sentiment, and scientific modernity; Epilogue: new pasts, new futures.