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As a surgeon, Nicholas Tilney, MD, has always found it interesting when patients and their families show little interest in the details of their surgeries.
“They sort of close their eyes and let us do what we’re going to do,” he said. “It seems to me very peculiar. And then, there are those who are interested in everything – who surgeons are, what they do and how they make advances.”
It is for that second group of people that Tilney wrote his book, “Invasion of the Body,” a chronicle of pivotal events in the history of surgery.
“This is a history of surgery for the public,” said Tilney, who completed his residency at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in the 1960s. “It focuses most on the advances that have occurred in the modern field, especially in the 20th Century. It features lots of stories and vignettes, using the Brigham as an example of teaching hospitals and their role in medical care and the advances in surgery.”
One of the anecdotes in the book features Mary Agnes Turner, the first person to be admitted to the new Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. It was 1913, and Turner spent 10 days in the hospital after undergoing a surgery to strip her varicose veins. Today, a procedure that accomplishes the same result is performed as a minimally invasive, outpatient procedure.
“There are many examples of how things have evolved, and how things came to be what they are today,” Tilney said. “The book also focuses on the evolution of the training system, which has changed significantly between the improvements to technology and the changes in work hours. The book not only addresses where we currently are, but also presumably where we might go, and where we should go.”