For Fear of Pain: British Surgery, 1790-1850

Oh, you hurt me, Sir! … are you going to do it again? – A patient, 1832
For Fear of Pain offers a social history of the operating room in Britain during the final decades of painful surgery. It asks profound questions: how could surgeons operate upon conscious patients? How could patients submit? It presents a revisionist view of surgery, hygiene, nursing, military and naval surgery and the introduction of anaesthesia.
For Fear of Pain seeks to unite the clinical with the human. Drawing on...