Two hundred years of surgery [6]

摘要

The 200th Anniversary article by Gawande (May 3 issue) omitted the fact that the first abdominal surgical procedure in the United States was an ovariotomy performed in 1809 in Danville, Kentucky, by Dr. Ephraim McDowell. The remarkable story, as well as a description of the procedure, is told by John L. Wilson in his 1998 manuscript, "Stanford University School of Medicine and the Predecessor Schools: An Historical Perspective," available through the Lane Medical Library at Stanford (http://elane.stanford .edu/wilson/html/chap4/chap4-sectl0.html).