Surgery

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Abstract: In Colonial America, there were many trades open to the colonists. These included wig making, blacksmithing, printmaking and many more. But a select few men decided to become surgeons. The methods of the colonial surgeons were very strange. Often, the, methods and tools that they used to treat their patients were crude and unsafe. They barely had any resources and most of the things that they knew we consider backwards and unsafe today. Surgery then was much different from surgery now. The crude practices and techniques of the colonial surgeon were primitive and beastlike. The following research paper explores the tools and techniques of the average colonial surgeon.

Some key points include:

• During the colonial times, only men could be surgeons but most people did not want to be surgeons because of the lack of respect that they recieved.
• Thigh fractures were considered dangerous but not lif threatening, depending on whether or not you caught an infection.
• Knee cap and elbow fractures were not considered dangerous at all.
• Compound fractures were very serious and could cause the patient to have to be amputated, die, and cripple them for life.
• Lower leg fractures were very similar to thigh fractures and were treated in almost the same way.
• Gun shot wounds were difficult to treat ad required someone with a very strong stomache.
• Bloodletting was just ne of the many crude and unsafe practices that the Europeans practiced for hundreds of years.
• Tendon wounds were very painful, but they way that they were treated was nearly the same as they are today.
• Trepanation was disgusting and primial but more people survived after getting the treatment than people who did not.
• Cannon ball wounds were the most painful of all the wounds, but may or may not have been fatal.
• Puncture wounds may or may not have been dangerous, it depended on where you were stabbed.
• They believed that by extracting teeth you could be cure of diseases.
• They had no anesthetics.

The differences between surgery in the colonial era and surgery now are vast. They had crude, primative, and unsafe tools while we have modern, sterile, and safe tools. Do you think that in two hundred years our surgical tools will be considered crude, unsafe, and primative?

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